


A different kind of brave

by fairytalefix



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dark!Emma, F/F, Recovery, Regal Believer, Self-Harm, Swan Believer, Swan-Mills Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-03-25 06:57:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3801073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairytalefix/pseuds/fairytalefix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After darkness tears the world apart, they pick up the pieces together, unravelling secrets along the way.  </p>
<p>Set after season 4 and the appearance of dark!Emma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that there are references to self-harm throughout this story. I will let you know if there's anything graphic. 
> 
> I'd love to hear from you. I'm on Tumblr under the same user name, fairytalefix.

She slips. Every year on June 10th at 6:30am, Emma Swan slips into her car and across the town line without a word spoken and only a note written. 

_Back on the 12th._

_-E_

Her mother erupted in delusions of catastrophe the first year. Henry scuffled his feet against loose sidewalk rocks and dug his teeth into his lip and played with his food until it was cold. When Emma slipped back into town, she had lunch with Henry for a week and didn't speak to Snow for two.

The second year, her mother only fidgeted and when she said, “But, David--,” David said, “Hush. She's fine,” and Henry agreed.

It hadn't been her place to worry because she was not Emma's family, had not even been her friend. But she would have been remiss if she had not acknowledged the ache wedged between her shoulder blades when the Bug disappeared on the 10th. She would be equally remiss if she had not acknowledged its dissolution when she saw the car parked in front of the apartments on the 12th.

The third year, June 10th marked the aftermath of a rather spectacular and lethal display revealing far more of Storybrooke's character than made Storybrooke comfortable. 

_leaving in the morning,_ Emma had texted. It had been 9:13pm. Regina had just removed her make up.

_back for dinner sun. henry knows._

The morning had been the 10th. Sunday had been the 15th. 

_All right_ , she had replied. _Enchiladas?_

_can u make ur mac & cheese?_

_Of course._

_thx see u soon._

_Check in if you need to._

_thx I will._

She hadn't. 

Five minutes before 7pm on Sunday, June 15th there had been a rap on the door.

“I'll get it,” Henry had said.

But Regina had waved him away. “Can you fill the water glasses, please, and put the milk on the table?” She had dried her hands and removed her apron and ran her fingers through her hair to dislodge any stray bits of cheese and/or breadcrumbs as she hurried to the door. 

She blanched when she saw Emma, eyes bagged and lids red rimmed and puffed. Her shoulders slumped and her hands flitted like flighty sparrows at the end of her wrists. Her jacket seemed too large, and when she said, “I made it,” the words tripped as if they were too unwieldy to squeeze through the narrow hollow of her throat. 

Before she had fully known what she was doing or why, Regina had held out her arms and Emma had fallen into them, breathing heavily, and trying, Regina suspected, trying not to cry.

“We would've waited for you,” Regina had told her by way of consolation, but her assurance had only made Emma buckle further into her, grip her tighter, and break into the tears she had been trying not to shed. 

_“Why?”_ Emma had asked, the strangled soft cry surprising the both of them.

“You're family,” Regina had said.

Emma had tensed, and sucked in a hissing gasp that rattled her. She shook her head, pulled away, pulled her arms around her torso. While the night was not too cold, Emma's unspoken sentiment was, and Regina shivered in the clutch of it. 

Regina had gripped Emma's arms as if squeezing the woman's body could dislodge her doubt. And then, because it was important and guaranteed to sway her, Regina said, “He wants to see you.”

“I don't know why.”

“He—he loves you,” she says, and she means _Henry_. She does.

“Same problem.”

“You don't get a say in who he loves, Emma,” Regina had said with a bit more bite than she intended. “Right now, you're on that list, and it's a very short list.”

Emma had winced.

“Even if you don't think you deserve a family, Henry does,” Regina had said. “I won't let you take that from him.” She had watched Emma sigh, bite her lip.

“I'm not sure if I'm the family Henry needs.”

Regina had shaken her head. “That hardly matters. You're the family he's chosen, and if there's one thing I know about Henry it's that he never gives up on the people he loves. So if you leave here without seeing him and coming in to eat your share of the macaroni and cheese I made as per your request, he will follow you and I will not stop him.”

Emma had arched her eyebrow.

“I may even encourage such behavior.”

“Macaroni and cheese, huh?” Emma had scrutinized her side long. “With fried breadcrumbs?”

“Fried breadcrumbs, half a cup of butter, two pounds of cheese and a pint of cream.”

“Good lord, woman.”

“No onions.”

“Bacon?”

“On half.”

“You're trying to kill me.” 

“Fat helps replenish magical stores.”

“And you're just telling me this now?”

“To protect you from yourself I felt it necessary to conceal this information.”

“Tricky.”

“Are you coming in now or do I send Henry over with a Pyrex full of sodium and cholesterol in twenty minutes?”

Emma had sighed and folded her arms across her stomach, her gaze narrowed and distant, her magic trembling. When Emma had looked back up at Regina, her lip wedged between her teeth and her self-hate replaced by trepidation, Regina had smiled, reached out and traced the light pink scar on Emma's chin with her thumb.

“Trust me,” she had said softly.

And Emma had. 

\--

Regina had been opening another bottle of wine when she noticed Emma's eyes still trained on Henry retreating up the steps. While Emma had attempted to hide her grief at his new limp, her eyes darkened, the lines of her face deepened. Regina had nudged the stem between Emma's fingers and nodded towards the living room. 

“You're not gonna make me talk, are you?” Emma had asked.

Regina's laugh had been unexpected. “Attempting to make you do anything has thus far proven ineffectual, not to mention violently frustrating,” she had said.

Emma's lips had slipped into that smirk she had bequeathed to Henry, and Regina had found herself lingering her eyes over those lips longer than necessary. She had mentally shaken herself. It wasn't the time. Not with the blight of deception hovering still over them, not when the fallout of betrayal was still ripe and red and raging.

She turned on a movie, though now she couldn't recall the name of it, only that Emma had been disinterested, but grateful for company. Which, she realized, Emma had never said aloud. There hadn't been a need.

Halfway through the film, Emma had taken the cushion beside her and plopped it next to Regina's legs. She curled up, head on the pillow, legs tucked into her stomach, arms wrapped around her body. Henry did the same when he was scared or anxious or thinking very deeply about something very important. 

And Regina hadn't been able to help herself, so she said, “Come here,” and had gently tugged the pillow against her legs. Emma had followed. A wave of Regina's hand and a blanket had covered Emma, perfectly tucked around the edges of her grieving body. Regina had laid her hand on Emma's arm, rubbed her thumb three times across the soft flannel of Emma's shirt and then stilled.

“Thank you,” Emma had said.

“Of course.”

That is how they began nearly one year ago.

\--

Now they are three days into June and at 8:47am, the lilac bushes on her way to work are a tizzy hum of bees. Still bustled with purple and white blooms, she finds three excellent sprigs, two purple, one white, and clips them, never minding the drones. Workers know a queen when they smell one, and fly far when she comes near. 

By 10am, her office is redolent of the blossoms. At 11:48am, she looks up at a soft rap on her door, and smiles, pleasantly surprised, but then concerned because it's Emma. Emma walks the shore and roams the forest, but never ventures into the town proper until after 6pm. Wrinkles ridge her plaid flannel and the fabric bunches under the strap of her leather messenger bag. Her ponytail is windblown, and the faint scent of salt and sea accompanies her into the room.

“Is everything all right?” Regina asks.

Emma tangles her fingers white around the strap of her bag. “Yeah,” she says, but her voice is breathy and short, and her eyes trip over every object in the room. “Got a minute?”

“Of course, dear.”

Emma bites her lip but says nothing. Regina waits patiently. 

“You know, never mind,” Emma mumbles. “This was a bad idea.” 

She turns to leave, but Regina says, “Em,” softly, so softly, and Emma stops. Her shoulders curve as if trying to wrap herself around herself, and her pointer finger dizzies the first knuckle of her thumb. Regina pushes away from her desk and pushes through the zinging fray ensconcing Emma. And she knows, she knows, that this is a very important moment that could nourish this slow growing relationship, one year in, yet still so infant. Important things take time, she tells herself again and again. Neither will jump in quickly anymore. 

“What is it?” Regina asks, and the undercurrent says _you don't need to hide yourself from me._ She's looking at Emma in profile. Looking away and looking towards catches Emma somewhere in between. 

“It's nothing,” Emma says, but the zinging fray says it's so important it scares me.

“No secrets, no lies,” Regina says softly and gently lays a hand on her shoulder. 

Emma moistens her lips and shuffles her stance. No secrets, no lies. “You're probably busy,” she says.

“Now? No. I haven't any meetings today.”

“A week from now.” The words scrape across Emma's throat and her eyes fall half closed. She's looking away.

“A week from--” Oh. Oh. Today is June 3rd. In one week it will be June 10th. And Emma is looking away, looking away when Regina wants her to be looking towards because, “I'm not busy,” she says quickly. 

“You haven't even looked.”

“I can reschedule.”

Now Emma's gaze is sidelong and burgeons with skepticism. “You hate rescheduling.”

“Not if it's important.”

“You don't know what it is.”

“I know it's important to you,” she says. And now she's the one looking away because they have built this year so gradually and purposefully out of the bricks of Sunday dinners and walks on Thursday night and early morning texts of i need ur help will u plz come?; secured it with the mortar of determination and smoothed over the cracks with mutual trust, but the rules have always been amorphous and she can't help that, “That's enough for me.”

Because it is. It is enough that June 10th is important to Emma and it's enough that they have each other in any capacity. For a moment she's worried that her passion has bungled this Very Important Moment because Emma is looking towards her now and Regina has never seen her eyes quite so luminous, never seen her body loosen quite so quickly, but before she has a chance to fully concede her error, Emma kisses her.

She can count on one hand the kisses they've shared. But she doesn't bother counting because Emma is warm against her thin silk and she's all leather and salt, well-worn flannel and a flurry of sea tossed wind; her lips are moist then parting and now her tongue is teasing at Regina's teeth and now Regina drops her jaw with an unsurprising eagerness and 

this is not at all slow going.

Regina registers an arm beneath her blazer and a hand cupping her jaw, fingers splayed across her neck and she loops her arms around Emma's back and buries her fingers in Emma's hair. Each pulls the other closer, closer until there is no closer to be had. (Not yet. Not now.) When Emma breaks away, her breathlessness hums warm against Regina's neck as her forehead presses soft against the curve of Regina's temple. She is warm and soft, leather and sea wind, and the arms that hold Regina tight are of light that knows the art of shadow.

Shadows slip so quick away, but Regina would never her go. Not when she's saying, 

_This way. This way._  
_Please,_  
_won't you come with me?_

–

She tells Henry that she and Emma are going on a short trip next Wednesday, the 10th, but they'll be back on Friday, the 12th. While she trusts him to stay by himself, she'd rather he stay with Belle and eat something other than take out and pizza.

“She's taking you with her?” is all he says. His face is awe looped by a thin thread of jealousy. “Really?”

“Yes,” she tells him, and marks the thrill in her stomach, the lightness of her skin. 

“Have you told her you love her yet?”

“Henry!” His name bites out sharper than she intended, but it's a sensitive topic and he knows it.

“So, no.” His lips slide in that floppy haired smirk and she can't really be angry at him. “At least, you haven't used those words.”

“It's—complicated.”

“It's complicated because you're making it complicated,” he tells her, and she wishes he was eight again instead of fourteen, but age regression probably wouldn't help matters any as he's always been astute. “There haven't been any really bad guys for a year, and you're both used to fighting. Fighting or hiding.”

Always astute.

“So now you're fighting yourselves and hiding from each other while still trying to be together.”

Always. 

“You know there's more to it than that,” she says and eyes the scar running a pink trail down his cheek. 

He looks back down at his laptop and saves his work, but doesn't put the machine away. He saves his work again. “She's doing better,” he says, and his face is hesitant when she sees it again. “Isn't she? Aren't both of you?” The year left far more than the physical marks. He's working on trusting his instincts again.

“Every day,” she tells him and attempts a reassuring smile, the sort of smile that came with far more ease a year ago. Before the world turned upside down. 

“She texted me earlier,” he says and pulls his phone from his pocket. “She said she loved me.”

While there's happiness in his words, she knows he doesn't trust it because they are where they are right now because happiness was the thing they thought they didn't have. She learned. She learned very quickly what she already had when she saw him splayed akimbo on the street, a piece of metal jutting from his stomach. “She does love you, Henry,” Regina tells him, the memory moistening her eyes. The blood meant more when it came from someone she loved.

He hears the tears in her voice and looks up, concerned. “You okay?”

“Just remembering,” she says. And he understands because he's Henry, and she can't believe a shot of pixie dust coupled with her desperate longing blinded her to how much she loves him. How much she loves when she remembers him. 

“I love you, too,” he says, and some of the world's weight drops off.

“I'm sorry you're not coming with--”

But he's shaking his head and dismissing her sentiment. “No, Mom,” he says. “I—I think it's great she's taking you.” His eyes lose their bitter edge and gleam under the incandescent light. “I really do. I just--”

“What?”

He's weighing her with his eyes and while she can stand her ground unwavering before an enemy's armada, she bites the inside of her lip as he watches her. “You're brave when you're using magic and protecting the town, but you and Emma? That's another kind of brave. That one's harder.”

“More complicated?” she asks, her eyebrow arched.

“There's more at stake,” he says. “Especially after—“ He looks away and taps the edge of his computer. “After what happened last year.” He takes a breath. “You guys get each other.” 

For some reason, it's of the utmost importance that she say, “I love you,” right now.

“I love you, too,” he says again, and she breathes in their shared adoration because that bond was hard won. He knows that, is fully aware that their bond is not something found, but something built, and so it makes sense to her that he says, “Grandma's gonna be mad Emma's taking you and not her.”

Regina moves from the doorway to sit next to him on his bed, moving slowly enough to give him time to move the pile of comics beside him. “Snow nearly destroyed that bridge, Henry,” Regina tells him.

“With lies.”

“With lies and secrets,” she affirms. She rubs circles on his back, his wool sweater new and still a bit scratchy. “We came back from it.”

“It's just hard to watch sometimes,” he says. “Grandma loves Emma a lot.” He sighs, and she remembers that being thirteen is being human and neither is so easy. “But she's selfish.”

She barks a laugh and the sound startles him, because she laughs so rarely anymore.

“Snow's a princess,” Regina reminds him. “She grew up pampered.” She doesn't say 'spoiled,' though she means it.

“You probably did her a favor,” Henry says, and his eyes gloss over, remembering a memory he made through a story. “Trying to kill her. She had to be a bandit. Learn how to get by on her own, see that the world isn't always so nice.” He looks up at her, but there's no condemnation in his eyes for her actions. Instead, there's a searching and maybe a tinge of remorse she's not sure what to do with, but knows she wants to erase.

“What is it, honey?”

He looks away and his spine slumps. He glances at the storybook on his bedside table, and her stomach flips remembering the time and passion she poured over the pages. But he says, “I'm sorry I ever called you evil.” 

And he says it so quietly she almost misses it, but his words catch in her throat and flutter her heart, and the moment becomes glossed with a patina of unreality. “Oh, Henry--” She reaches out to smooth his hair, to feel his presence with her fingertips, but he shirks her and says,

“No, Mom,” and takes the storybook and flips it open to a bookmark and points at the picture of the Evil Queen. “This is what you look like when you're scared no one can love you because you're not good enough,” he says, and his throat sounds thick and the picture swims through the tears in her eyes. He thrums his fingers across the bookmarks sticking up out of the pages. “I figured it out. You didn't have to learn how not to be evil, you had to learn that people were wrong about you, that you weren't how they said you were. You had to learn that you were wrong about yourself.”

She blinks back the tears in her eyes, and she reaches out to touch the bookmarks. “Are these all about me?” she asks. 

“No,” he says, firmly and so, so confidently. “They're about the Evil Queen. You're different now. You know how to love people. She didn't, or she forgot how, and that's why she was so angry and afraid.”

“Oh,” she says softly, and now there is no blinking back her tears, so she lets them fall in slow rivulets down her cheeks.

Henry flips to another bookmarked page. Again, she's dressed in her regalia and it's hard to see, hard to look at because it's what she used to be when she thought she wasn't anything. “When I was little, these pictures scared me. But they scared me because they reminded me of what I look like when I think—“ He takes a deep breath. “--when I think no one could really love me.” He squeezes her hand. “I didn't know how to read the story behind the words then, but I do now.”

Oh, Henry, she thinks but can't say because there's a lump above her collarbone, so she slides her arm around his shoulders, and pulls him close.

“You weren't ever evil, Mom,” he says softly. “A lot of people taught you how to be afraid, and you believed them. But you taught yourself how to be brave.” He kisses her cheek and squeezes her tight and whispers, “I'm really proud of you.”

“Honey,” she manages to choke out, and she doesn't know how to tell him that she has waited a lifetime for someone to say

_I'm really proud of you_

and it means everything to her that he was the one who said it first.

Somehow, she thinks, even though she cannot say it, somehow she thinks he understands. 

He understands the story behind the words, understands that Emma and Snow are where the two of them used to be, and that she and Emma are in someplace entirely new to both of them. He understands that sometimes there's nothing to be done because the fight isn't yours and everyone comes to their own realizations in their own time.

And he understands how hard that is to watch, and how important it is that they muddled through and remembered, despite the betrayal and every secret, they remembered how to choose each other again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for self-harm.
> 
> Feel free to talk to me on tumblr if you don't want to here. Same user name.
> 
> Enjoy.

When she arrives at 6:54pm for dinner on Sunday, June 7th, Emma's hand is wrapped in a blood stained bandage and her body is wrapped in defensive resignation. “Don't 'Emma' me,” she says immediately and hands Regina a plastic bag filled with take out containers.

Regina looks from the bandage to the proffered bag and says, “Don't tell me they were out of Mongolian chicken.”

Emma stares at her a moment, mouth agape, and then a smile cracks her lips and she's laughing. She's laughing and Regina is smiling, their dinner is growing colder and Emma's hand is still bleeding.

But she's laughing, and Regina is certain that whatever seemed so grim before seems more manageable now, so she ushers Emma into the foyer, leaves the food on the table next the vase of flowers and escorts her upstairs. Absurd giggles lurch from Emma periodically and Regina laces their fingers together and tightens her grip. 

_Stay with me.  
Stay here._

It's not the first time Emma's shown up injured, and Regina's accustomed to the 3am texts:

_i'm sorry (3:02am)_

_i need ur help (3:03am)_

_i fucked up again (3:07am)_

She's never told Regina prior, only afterwards. But she knows that telling her at all is tremendous and a sign of dedication, so she'll take it. She's never pushed except to say, “You can tell me when it gets bad. I want to help you.” But after your lover has been revealed a liar and your parents betrayers, and the life you thought was your security is reduced to a pile of rubble in a matter of minutes, 

it takes time to trust that others want to help.

Because the liars, they said that once, too.

It takes time, she tells herself. After everything's been destroyed, it takes time to rebuild. 

That's what they're doing here. Rebuilding.

They slip into Regina's room and Regina makes certain the door is closed behind them so Henry knows to knock. 

“Do you want me to help you?” Regina asks. Sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes Emma refuses Regina's magic. Sometimes she wants Regina to wait outside the door and talk to her while she nurses her own wounds. 

This time Emma nods, the laughter gone now, her shoulders hunched, her bandaged hand drawn up like a shield before her chest. “I'm shit with my left hand.” She looks defeated, even broken, but Regina knows Emma's strength, and this,

this saying  
_I need your help_  
_fighting a demon_  
_only I can see,_

this is a different kind of strength  
and a different kind of brave

“Hey,” Regina says, and gently presses her palm into Emma's jaw. She's looking away again, looking away instead of towards. “Look at me?”

She moistens her lips and closes her eyes, and Regina's stomach clenches. But when Emma opens her eyes again, they're bright, so bright with tears, but looking, looking straight at her. She's waiting for the reprimand, though Regina's never given one. She's waiting for the ultimatum, though Regina's never said a thing. She's waiting for the scathing comment, the guilt trip, the thickly veiled attempt at aid wrapped in condescension. 

She's braced against her mother.  
Her mother after she's been gutted  
and lost the one thing  
she always sought to keep.

“Whatever you think I'm going to say,” she says quietly, “I'm not.”

Emma raises an eyebrow. “You won't tell me it's childish to punch a wall?”

“No, but I may tell you it's an ineffective demolition strategy.”

Emma smiles and Regina catches one of her tears as it falls with her thumb. “Yeah, you would,” Emma says, her voice tinny and congested. 

“Come on,” Regina says and pulls her to the bathroom.

Emma sits on the closed toilet seat and rests her hand on the edge of the sink. Gently, gently, Regina eases off the bandage. Emma winces and breathes deeply in through her nose. Briefly, Regina considers offering to take her to the hospital, but that's never turned out well.

“Who was the brick supposed to be?” she asks instead.

“Who do you think?” Emma closes her eyes and rests her head against the wall. 

“What happened this time?”

Emma bounces her leg and her spine curls. “She asked why you're going with me on Wednesday.”

Regina bites back a gasp as the bandages fall away. The skin over Emma's middle knuckle is split and still bleeding. The bone is visible. Her skin is already darkening, her three middle fingers already swollen. “Please tell me I can use magic on this.”

“Just--” A sigh morphs into a groan. “Just heal the cut and take the swelling down.”

“Emma--”

“ _Please,_ ” she says sharply, and her eyes dart around the bathroom, her arm pulses in an attempt to keep it still. “Please. If it's still bad on Wednesday, you can heal it, but for now just--just the cut and the swelling.” Her eyes fill with tears again, and Regina remembers a night several months ago when she said, 

_I just need to see that something hurts._

She understood that. She had inflicted pain on others because she needed to see that something hurts. But understanding didn't make it easier. Understanding made it harder because she knows that place, and knows that while she can stand outside and call to Emma, she can't reach in and scoop her out. 

“Okay,” Regina agrees. “Okay.” She calls the enchantments she needs and focuses all of her intent, all of her emotion, on Emma. The bones knit, the swelling recedes, the bruise fades to a mottled green, and Emma breathes a bit easier. Regina brushes her thumb across Emma's fingers and says softly, “You'll stay here tonight?”

It's a statement couched in a question, because that's their arrangement. If something like this happens and Emma lets Regina know, they stay together. 

“Yeah,” Emma says, softly. “Thanks.”

“Of course,” Regina says. She pulls a washcloth from the rack and douses it with cool water. Over the run of the faucet, she asks, “What did your mother have to say?”

“Nothing intelligent.” 

Regina arches her eyebrow, wrings out the cloth, and Emma sighs. 

“She asked why you.” She accepts the washcloth and presses it to her face, wipes her eyes, her cheeks, her neck. “I told her that we're together and it's normal to take trips with your significant other and she freaked out.” Emma slings the washcloth over the side of the sink and reaches for Regina's right hand with her good one, and slides Regina's ring from side to side, her eyes staring through the stone. 

“It's not just a trip,” Regina reminds her, thrumming her thumb along Emma's palm. “It's your trip.”

“A trip they'll never take with me,” Emma mumbles. 

“That's your decision,” Regina says. “Snow knows that.”

“She's jealous,” Emma says. “Of you.”

“Yes.” A few years ago the idea of Snow being jealous of her would've thrilled her. But not now. Now it twists into an echo in her gut and trails bitterness along the back of her throat. 

“She said we acted like friends, not lovers. That you couldn't--” Emma rolls her eyes. “That you couldn't possibly be my true love because of the way we--” She licks her lips. Her body tenses. Her eyes widen and water. She shakes her head, clears her throat. “Because, you know, true love worked out so well for them.”

“Snow doesn't get a say in our relationship,” Regina reminds her. “She's perfectly entitled to her judgment. No matter how wrong it is.”

Emma nods and hums, but says nothing.

Regina narrows her eyes. “She said something about me, didn't she?”

Emma narrows her eyes back. “I can't be that transparent.”

Regina smiles. “To me you are.”

A pause erupts and it's weighted and full, and the fullness is Emma's protective streak which Regina knows means “I love you,” and the weight is Emma's hesitance to admit it. The silence pulls them closer together instead of rising mountainous between them. “She said you're poisoning me against her. That all you've ever wanted is to destroy her life. Said you'd never change. Called you evil.” She leans forward, her elbow digging into her thigh. “I can't deal with that shit, 'Gina. I just can't. After everything she did, everything she hid from me, and she calls you--” She grits her teeth and clenches her injured hand.

“Stop,” Regina says sharply, dropping to her knees in front of Emma and taking her injured hand between her palms. “I may have healed the bone, but it's still fragile.” She swallows and rubs Emma's bare forearm to help her circulation. Emma's fingers relax. She doesn't look away from Emma's arm as she says, “I'm used to being called evil, Em.”

“That doesn't make it okay. And it's a lie,” Emma says, her eyes flashing, her voice bitter. She claps her hand over Regina's whisking back and forth across Emma's skin. Regina looks up at her, into the eye of Emma's indignation. “You saved Storybrooke, you saved every--” Her throat catches and she clears it. “You saved all of us. She's the only one who refuses to see that because she's the one who endangered it in the first place!”

“Be that as it may,” Regina says, “punching walls does nothing to protect me.”

Emma's head thunks against the wall. “Stop using logic.”

“Then stop taking your anger at your mother out on yourself.” She didn't mean to speak so harshly, and the second the words escape, she wants to suck them back in because they're so close to the ultimatum she swore she'd never give. 

But Emma only grumbles low, wipes her good hand across her forehead, and mumbles, “Point.”

Regina reaches up and runs her fingers through Emma's hair and Emma dips her chin into Regina hand. “You don't deserve to be treated so brutally,” Regina says, unable to stop concern from furrowing across her forehead. “Not by you. Not by anyone.”

“Then why did they?” Emma asks and silence dwarfs her voice and the fight heaves from her body and she's exhausted, exhausted from a war intangible, exhausted by a weight invisible, and Regina feels her ache as a visceral scream.

_I figured it out._  
_You had to learn_  
_that people_ ,  
_people were wrong about you_.

Regina rises up on her knees and Emma leans forward to rest her head against Regina's shoulder. “No secrets,” Emma breathes, and buries her face in the crook of Regina's neck, her left arm wrapping around Regina's back and holding on tightly--so tightly now.

_You had to learn_  
_that you were wrong,_  
_wrong about yourself._

“No secrets,” Regina agrees. She rests her head against Emma's and holds her, offering her this security, this comfort and all of the love she has because they are what she deserves. She may not be able to drive Emma's picking fingers away from her healing wounds or force her to forget the words that still raze, but she can promise _No secrets_ ,

and she can say  
_they were wrong about you._  
_My darling one,_  
_they were wrong._  
_And you are wrong_  
_to believe_  
_that what the liars said_  
_and what the betrayers did_  
_in any way_  
_reflects the truth of you._

–

By 10:27pm Emma's eyelids slip closed, and her glass of wine sits on the end table half finished. Regina clicks off the movie and shifts her legs from beneath the pillow under Emma's head and tucks the blanket around her shoulders. She leaning in to kiss her forehead when Emma mumbles,

“No,” and breathes in slow and sleepy. “I want to come with you.” She rubs her eyes. “If that's okay.”

Regina's fluttered by surprise because Emma doesn't crawl into bed until after 3am. They fall asleep apart and wake up together. Sometimes Emma smells of whiskey and tobacco, sometimes she's sweat soaked from dreams. But she's there when Regina wakes up at 7:30am, snugged up close beside her, still, and still sleeping.

“It is,” Regina says, but isn't sure she's right. Emma looks up at her and even in the shadow, Regina can tell she's wide awake now and doesn't quite believe her. “It is,” she says with more confidence.

“No secrets, no lies,” Emma says. “If it's not okay, tell me. I'll sleep here.”

No secrets, no lies. Even after a year, still so important to her, to both of them. To Henry, too. Lies carry the weight of destruction, secrets, the potential for death. Neither of them would tarnish the cornerstone of their relationship. No secrets. No lies.

“It's not what I was expecting,” Regina says. “That's all.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” Because Emma said _come with me,_ and Regina won't tell her _stay here_. “Come on.”

She helps Emma untangle herself from the blanket and gives her a hand up. Emma pulls herself flush and wraps her arms around Regina's waist, tucks them close in, and says,

“Where I stay isn't great.”

“What?”

“When I—I go,” she says, and her voice is malleable while her body is ridged. “Where I stay isn't fancy or anything.” One arm slips away from Regina and Emma is biting her lip, worrying the white flesh with her fingers. “I don't know if we can find somewhere else this late. I didn't think of it till now.” Her shoulders hunch, her thumb is curled into the band of Regina's skirt and her arm hangs limp. 

“That doesn't matter to me,” Regina tells her.

“You're sure?”

Regina draws in a deep breath, reminds herself that patience is a virtue and that she's virtuous now. But she's also exhausted and low on both. She says, “Yes, I'm sure.”

“No secrets, no lies,” Emma says.

Patience. A virtue. “No secrets. No lies.”

Emma scrutinizes her for a moment, and then nods.

“Come on,” Regina says, hoping for her own reassurance. “Let's get to bed.” She leads Emma to the foot of the stairs, extinguishing the lights, cleaning the dishes, and locking the door with a thought and a flick of her fingers.

“Cheater,” Emma mumbles, and squeezes Regina's hand.

Regina winks at her. _"Resourceful."_

\--

Regina wakes at 3:04am out of habit. Out of habit, she checks the indicator on her phone, but then remembers that Emma is here, with her. 

But the blankets have been flung aside and the mattress is cold beside her. The crack beneath the bathroom door is dark. Stifling a surge of panic, she illuminates the room with a thought and a wave of her wrist. But no Emma. She swears softly, turns back the covers, slings her arms through her robe and slides her feet into her slippers. 

She's on the second step down when she sees a flood of light pouring into the downstairs hallway from the kitchen and she breathes a bit more easily. From the base of the stairs, she sees Emma coiled and hunched over her sketchbook. She has spread loose sketches in rows over the table and refers to them periodically. Regina catches the whispered edge of, “no, not it,” and, “not right, Em,” and Emma's body spirals in on itself, her nose inches from her work as she erases wrong lines or corrects shading. 

Regina's body warms and loosens, and the pinch at the base of her spine releases. The mellow light of the kitchen casts Emma's hair gold, leaps and circles above her head, around her face and body. She's haloed by light, though Emma would snort and roll her eyes at the idea. 

But hair hastily pulled into a ponytail, black rimmed glasses perched on her nose, and her jaw lax as she follows the lines, 

_It's just—following the lines in my head.  
It's not a big deal._

_Well, the lines in your head are beautiful.  
These are exquisite, Em._

_...really?_

_Yes, really._

_Thanks._

and she's--

she's Emma. Not perfect, not transcendent, maybe not true love, but true and loving anyway, because she's Emma. She's trusting and trustworthy; she's strength and she's kindness, and she's _real._

Emma is no fairy tale.

She's not some angel sent by fate or  
a product of destiny's intertwining threads. 

She's a choice.

Everything she ever believed about true love seems ridiculous now, at 3:14am on Monday, June 8th, because Emma is sketching in her kitchen dressed in a tank top and Christmas plaid flannel pants, so focused and so unabashedly herself

no posturing,  
no masks,  
no lies,  
no dagger hidden beneath a cloak,  
no moronic story to draw her in, 

no goddamn secrets  
and  
no sixth-guessing  
and  
absolutely no magic  
(well, maybe a little magic)

and they may not be together forever,  
time and mortality have ways  
of fooling the bound,  
but they're together now

in her kitchen  
after the ashes have all been swept away  
and the underbelly of their delusions revealed,  
they're together now.

And she's happy about it.  
Fuck all,  
she's happy.

Regina deliberately scuffs the hard soles of her slippers against the wood flooring as she advances through the kitchen door.

“Lurker,” Emma says without looking up, but she's smiling.

That smile picks apart the knot in Regina's chest because 2am to 4am is either Emma's best time or her worst. Given Emma's earlier altercation with a brick wall, she wasn't sure which it would be tonight.

Regina shrugs and leans over Emma's shoulder. “What are you working on?” And she gasps because it's a picture of Henry. Henry smiling with his head tucked under Regina's chin, the both of them safe and, it seems, happy. 

“How do you do this?” she breathes because Henry is undeniably Henry in Emma's picture, even more himself than in some photographs.

“With pencils,” Emma says, and pecks a kiss to Regina's jaw. “Did I wake you up?”

“Just wondered what you were up to that wasn't sleeping.”

“Thanks,” Emma says, because she knows Regina means _I wanted to make sure you were all right._ “It's slow going with a busted hand.”

“Remember that next time you want to punch a wall.”

“I didn't want to punch a wall,” Emma says. “I wanted to punch my mother's face.”

“That didn't help last time.”

“It may have this time.”

“Impeccable logic.”

“I thought so.”

Regina smirks and her eyes rove to the other pictures laid out on the table. She feels Emma tighten, hold her breath because those pictures are also of Henry and Regina. 

Henry running, horrified, stumbling.  
Henry standing, exhausted and beseeching.  
Henry strewn limply on the asphalt, and that warp of metal--

Regina standing firm, magic pouring off of her body in white light waves.  
Regina's arm broken, crouched in a shadowed corner for an interrupted moment of reprieve,  
her good hand held up and lit, her expression determined, tired, and understanding at the same time.  
Regina crumpled next to Henry's body, her face wet, her fight gone,

and then her eyes,  
her eyes begging, hoping,  
hoping to change--

_Please._  
Please.  
Please. 

“You saved everyone,” Emma said softly, and leaned her head against Regina's shoulder. “You and Henry.” She reaches out to touch the picture of Henry in front of them; her fingers—calloused, scarred, bruised—they tremble just above the scratches of shading on his cheek. “After my mother--” She grips the pencil tight with her injured hand. 

Regina runs her fingers across the mottling on Emma's knuckles, wedges a finger into her fist, hushes, “Shhh,” and gently unfurls Emma's hand. Emma's knuckles stick and crack, but she lets go the pencil and floats her palm just above Regina's.

“How can you still be here?” Emma asks. 

The lament in her voice catches Regina under the chin, locks up her lungs, and everything she wants to say jumbles together as it always does because she doesn't know how to tease out the words into a pattern that Emma would understand. So she presses a long kiss to Emma's head and says, “Because I want to be,” against her scalp.

Emma's hand pulls away and she buries it in the crease between her thighs. 

Regina's waiting, has been waiting for over a year, for the dam to burst and the words to fall. It's coming, she thinks. Every day, the coming creeps closer, and every time Emma lashes out at her body Regina knows the words dangle on the precipice of her teeth and tongue and she's desperate to corral them back into their cages. She lashes out, but the coming creeps closer.

“It's outside of Rochester,” Emma says softly. “Where we're going.” 

“All right,” Regina says.

“It's a ten hour drive. You still want to come?”

“Yes.”

Emma picks at her cuticles. “You don't have to.”

“I know.”

“You'll be missing work.”

“I've already rescheduled,” Regina says. “My calendar is clear.”

“Something could happen.”

“Something could,” Regina agrees. She wants to turn over the images on the table. The depiction of Henry's horror wears on her. But she's not the one who hears him scream. She toys with the end of Emma's ponytail. “Are you having second thoughts?” 

“No,” Emma says quickly. “I-I want you to come with.”

But that doesn't mean she isn't nervous about having a companion. 

“Then I'll be there.”

Emma nods, but the curves between her neck and shoulders contract and she picks up her pencil again.

“I'll leave you to your work,” Regina says, and kisses Emma's cheek. 

As Regina's hands are falling away from Emma's shoulders, Emma says, “'Gina?” 

“Hmm?”

When Emma looks at her, something in Regina's chest flutters because she's never been looked at quite like this before. Not even Daniel held her quite so tenderly with his eyes, like she was fine china or thin glass with a streak of metal blown through; like she was quite so precious or quite so--

“I--” Emma says before her voice breaks and they're caught in a dead space without oxygen, but it's okay because they're breathing something far more saturated with life; and it's okay because, 

because this is what it's supposed to be, after rain has cleared the smoke and washed the ash away. This is what it's supposed to be to be--

“Sleep well,” Emma says.

Regina smiles. “Thank you."

–

Emma  
_bring the shorts i made u buy (Tuesday, June 9th, 8:34pm)_

Gina  
_Yes, dear. Anything else? (Tuesday, June 9th, 8:35pm)_

Emma  
_too late for cookies? (Tuesday, June 9th, 8:39pm)_

Gina  
_Cooled and packed. (Tuesday, June 9th, 8:40pm)_

Emma  
_ur the best (Tuesday, June 9th, 8:41pm)_

– 

Gina  
_Em? Where are you? (Wednesday, June 10th, 6:32am)_

Gina  
_You were supposed to be here twelve minutes ago. (Wednesday, June 10th, 6:32am)_

Gina  
_Emma, answer me. (Wednesday, June 10th, 6:33am)_

Gina  
_I'm on my way over. (Wednesday, June 10th, 6:35am)_

–

Regina clicks the lock of Emma's door 4 minutes later. The apartment is dark, unseasonably cold, and tastes of magic. Magic tastes metallic, like blood, like iron. Like the apex of strength and power. She had thought Emma had sworn off magic after--

\--after all that's come before, but here, in the black of Emma's reprieve, magic engulfs Regina like a cape woven by a neophyte's hand from too many different fibers. Twisted and misshapen. Dense in some places, thin in others, and easily torn apart.

“Emma?” she calls, leaving the door part way open behind her. She tries the switch, but the bulbs are either burnt out or blown. 

“I can't shut it off,” Emma says, her voice congested and thick. A shudder runs through the space, and Regina braces against it. “You need to—to leave, before I--”

“You won't,” Regina says firmly, and ignites her palm with fire. Emma's apartment had never been well furnished, but what she did have now lay splintered across the stone floor. Old drawings and canvases, torn from their pins, speckle the wreckage. Pictures of Henry and Regina, Snow and David, Gold lying prone on the asphalt, not far from Henry; buildings half standing and blanketed by smoke. Regina looks away from the charcoal sketches, looks away from the deep, deep red sliced through. She places a protective hand across her stomach. “You won't hurt me.” 

“I have before.” Emma's voice comes from the far corner, and Regina thinks she sees her crumpled outline wedged between the remains of the couch and the wall. 

“I haven't just gone ten rounds with Gold this time,” Regina says, and Emma sucks in a breath at the man's name. The debris around Regina rasps against itself, it shifts and rises, 

\--“Emma,” Regina snaps.--

and she hears Emma's muffled shriek just before the top of her kitchen table bursts from the inside out.

But the splinters sizzle and burn inside a light blue phosphorescent globe, sparking white when they hit the boundary. Regina closes her fist and the globe shrinks. The debris inside creaks and compacts. She sets the globe down on the floor, dissolves the magic, leaving a pile of wood chips behind.

Emma's breaths come shuddering, panicked, loud, and Regina turns back towards Emma's dark outline and says, “I'm fine, Em.” She picks her way through the wreckage towards Emma. “Gold's been gone for over a year. He can't hurt anyone anymore.”

“I can,” Emma says distantly, and now Regina's only feet away from her, can feel the magic rolling off of her, magic chaotic and unpredictable and begging to be channeled.

“You can,” Regina says, squatting that few feet away. She holds her fire between them, for light, for warmth. For hope. “So can I.”

“But you wouldn't,” Emma says quickly.

Regina arches an eyebrow. “What makes you so sure you would?”

“Because—it's happened before.”

“It did,” Regina agrees. She pauses a moment. “But precedent does not determine inevitability.” This is, perhaps, the essence of all she's learned. “You have other choices open to you, and I trust you to make them.”

“How can you?” Emma asks, and her voice croaks the words. “After— _everything_ , after everything I've fucked up, how can you--”

“Because I love you.” Her words carry the directness of emotional sobriety and the substance of conviction, but it's not until Emma's magic abruptly shifts, the chaos ebbs, and Regina is on the receiving end of a fire lit hazel-eyed gape that Regina realizes the words she appended to her passion. “Oh,” she breathes, and eases herself to the ground. 

Emma sucks a rattling breath, her eyes still wide, and her eyes now wet. Regina wants to suck the words back in, not because she doesn't mean them, but because she's not sure the foundation of their relationship is strong enough yet to support the weight of their significance. Significance is a slaughtering beast or an enlivening beauty, and she's not sure which face will emerge this time.

But Emma's smiling. It's just a twitch of her cheeks, a slackening of her body, but she's smiling, and smiling isn't running and it's not a psychological or magical implosion. Smiling is staying and holding steady. Emma uncurls from her cramped space, stretches from the darkness, and crawls to sit in front of Regina, mindful of the fire burning gently between them. She reaches a cautious hand towards Regina's face and traces the line of her cheekbone with a fingertip, and when her lips part, she nods and she whispers, “Yeah.” 

And Regina releases the breath she had been holding, relieved that this time significance wears the face of beauty.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to those who messaged me about getting this chapter out. a) I'm thrilled you're enjoying the story, and b) I'm really quite good at being a perfectionist, so some prodding is helpful get me to stop fiddling. ;) 
> 
> Tremendously huge thank you to mel35 for help with the Italian, and to immadeofsnow and the other Italian Swen (sorry, I no longer have your username!) who volunteered to help. Thank you also to Google Maps street view for allowing me a virtual tour of Boston.
> 
> As always, feel free to talk to me on Tumblr @ fairytalefix. Enjoy.

“I can drive,” Emma insists again. She's folded up knees and elbows, and tetchy as hell in the passenger's side. Her seatbelt's still undone and she's clutching her messenger bag with one arm.

“I'm well aware,” Regina tells her. “But as I have no intention of allowing injury to either of us--”

Emma huffs,

“--because you obviously have not slept, and are magically and emotionally exhausted--”

and mewls softly in protest.

“--I will do the driving.” But she can't help the disdainful pinch between her eyes or the pinch at the corners of her lips as she sits behind the wheel of the Bug for the first time. “At least for now.”

“You hate my car.”

“I don't know your car,” Regina corrects. She adjusts the steering wheel and the seat, wincing to herself as the springs jut into her hips and thighs through the well-worn cushion. “The seats could stand to be reupholstered,” she mutters.

“I can drive.”

Regina glares at her. 

Emma glares back and does not back down. “I'm not tired,” she says again, sounding like Henry did when he was five and protesting his bedtime.

Regina eyes the dark circles under Emma's blood shot eyes and arches an eyebrow.

“I'm not!”

“Mmhm.”

Emma groans. “I hate when you're like this.”

“Correct?” Regina asks. “Logical? Smug?”

That elicits an eye roll and a smile. “Do you even know how to drive a clutch?”

Regina pops the car into first, presses the clutch, turns the key, and the Bug sputters to life. “What have I told you about underestimating my abilities?” 

Emma narrows her eyes. “Where'd you learn that?”

Regina smirks as she lets go the clutch and eases the Bug forward. “Fasten your seatbelt, and try to get some sleep, dear.”

“You know where you're going?”

Regina hands her phone to Emma, a course already plotted in blue arching up the screen. “We're taking 1 to 3, up to 295. I have no intention of wading through tolls and construction.” Emma nods her agreement, obviously impressed. “I'll wake you outside of Portland.”

Emma yawns, wide and long, and her eyes are left watering. “Maybe I am a little tired,” she mumbles.

Regina's lips flutter a smile, but she says nothing. Instead, she shifts through second and into third, leaving behind Storybrooke's last stop sign. She doesn't know where they're going, where all of _this_ is leading. And while she hates surprises, she—

she trusts Emma. She may not be able to navigate to their specific destination alone, but she can bring them close and trust Emma to guide them the rest of the way. 

She can. She _can_ and--

and she's driving a car she hates to an unknown destination for a withheld reason with the woman she loves in the passenger's side

and, gods help her, she's moderately accepting of it.

Accepting of the uncertainty of what she does not know, because seven days ago, Emma said, “Please come,”

and that's more than enough to compensate for not knowing, for being potentially unprepared and potentially lost to herself on twisting side streets and back roads.

Even if she doesn't know.

At 7:32am on Wednesday, June 10th, Emma reaches out a hand and slips her fingers in between Regina's. She's smiling at her sidelong, soft and sweet and open; she's whispering, “Thank you,” and she's closing her eyes. And for a moment, Regina is as thankful for the deception as she is for their survival of it. She's thankful for Hook's duplicity and Snow's lies; she's thankful for Robin's treachery, Zelena's jealousy, and Gold's manipulation.

She's thankful fate revealed itself a traitor so she doesn't have to listen to it anymore.

The red line up ahead, Regina squares her jaw and shifts into fifth.

“Brace yourself,” Emma tells her.

She does.

Yes. She does.

–

It's 9:02am in Portland, Maine, and chattering bubbles of people dressed in bright seersucker, khaki, and shiny new loafers surround the eight old wooden tables of Main Street Grounds. The garish and cacophonic display reinforces Regina's stance on never visiting tourist towns during the height of summer. 

Or ever.

A warm, dry hand slides over her right one, and she's suddenly aware that her knuckles are tight and her bicep clenched, and she realizes that if she were back in Storybrooke, the flame in her hand would be 4 feet high. Emma hums, “Shhh,” and rubs her arm. 

“They're lucky I don't have my magic,” Regina mutters, but Emma's warmth is soothing, a little like an enchantment. However, there are still six people ahead of them in line, and the cashier is busy dashing off coffee code on the side of paper cups because the temporary seersuckers are rattling off words like “ristretto” and “short” and “dry,” and Regina isn't convinced they know what they're talking about.

Then the woman at the counter asks for a grande dry cappuccino and Regina cannot contain her audible huff of disparagement. Nor can she stop the radical arch of her eyebrow wielded to fend off the irritated glances hurled back at them by the patrons in line.

“Why don't you go wait outside and let me deal with the peasants,” Emma says softly. “Go stretch or something. I'll bring you food and coffee as soon as I can.” 

It's an order, not a suggestion. Regina growls her agreement, and narrows her eyes further when Emma stifles a smile. But she brushes her lips across Emma's cheek, affords the complicated coffee orders one final glare, and stalks out of the establishment, her back straight, her steps measured and even. 

When the warm outside air hits her, so does the realization that she misses Storybrooke. She misses being known. She misses knowing.

She misses magic. She misses feeling Emma's magic.

She recants her belief that she is fine, that she is at peace with not-knowing, that feeling an aching emptiness in her gut where her magic used to be is anything other than painful. It's one thing to feel magic and deny its use, but it's another entirely not to feel her magic at all. Magic is power and a different sort of knowing. Here, she is powerless, and here, she realizes how much she depends on the knowing that magic supplies.

She's empty. She's ignorant. She's five senses instead of six.

Vulnerable.

She's--

She wraps her arms around her stomach. The wind picks up and a seagull touches down.

She's _scared._

But the coastline--

The coastline in Portland isn't the coastline she's used to. The ocean doesn't smell as clean or the wind taste as salty. The rocks aren't as worn or as craggy, the sky is a different sort of blue, its brilliance faded. It's brilliance different. The people are temporary. Temporary, not residents, and she's relieved Storybrooke is shielded so she never has to deal with tourists and their _relief_ and incessant wonder and upside-down map-holding revelations of ignorance. 

She hears footsteps quickly crunching gravel, and looks up to see Emma approaching with a falling-off pasted-on smile, hand already extending a cup of coffee. 

“Drink this before you hurt someone,” Emma tells her. She lifts the paper bag she's holding. “I got you something multi-grain. There are cranberries and walnuts involved, and oats all across the top. It looked healthy.” She watches Regina remove the lid from her cup and blow a ripple across the surface of the liquid. “You're scary when you're undercaffeinated and over hungry.”

“Let that be a lesson to you.” 

“No shit,” Emma mumbles. She breaks off a piece of what smells like a blueberry muffin and hums appreciatively. “I'm starving.”

“How many pastries did you get?”

“Four,” Emma says around a mouthful of muffin with just a tad of sheepishness. “I'm really, _really_ hungry.”

Regina smiles and now that she's holding her very own cup of very hot coffee, the color of the sky isn't so irksome. The milling tourists are almost provincial. “Magic does that.”

Emma's brow wrinkles and she swallows. “How are you doing without it?”

Trust Emma to know. “I'm--” she pauses, and contemplates coating her words in a thick layer of platitude, but disregards the idea just as quickly. “It's not what I was expecting,” she admits, and follows as Emma nods towards a nearby picnic table, thickly painted red, chained to the ground. She settles herself on the bench and holds the messenger bag as Emma sloughs her denim jacket. Her black tank top reveals arms tanned from days spent sketching on the shore and fine lines from nights spent silencing demons.

“What were you expecting?” Emma asks, and Regina pauses mid-sip. 

“To still feel it,” she says, handing the bag back to Emma. “Even if I couldn't use it.” 

Emma nods and perches on the table. Her bottom lip pouches out as her tongue drags around her teeth. She sips her coffee. “It's one of my favorite parts of leaving,” she admits. “Leaving all that shit in Storybrooke.” Regina isn't sure if she's talking about her magic, her parents, the events of last year, or all of it, but Emma's gaze is long and unfocused. Regina runs her hand back and forth along Emma's thigh. “I get to be someone else and feel more like myself at the same time,” Emma says.

A rueful smile lifts the corners of Regina's mouth. “When I first cast the curse, I was relieved to be somewhere without magic, even if it was terribly inconvenient at times.” She pauses, and attempts to decipher Emma's receptivity with five senses instead of her sleeping sixth. “It took me awhile to learn that magic, even dark magic, isn't inherently bad. It depends on the one using it.”

Emma's gaze is still distant, Regina's words without purchase. “It's too much power,” she says quietly. “I don't like—being different.” She laughs, but it's teetering on disdainful. “When I was a kid, I wanted superpowers, like flying or something, 'cause I figured if I was special, a family would want me. Maybe I'd even have friends.”

Regina squeezes Emma's leg, leans towards her. 

“Then I find out I am special, but it's only because--” Emma's jaw tightens and wildness flashes in her eyes. Masses of words wrestle against the bars of their cages, and Regina holds on to her hand for fear of losing her to the undertow.

“Without magic, I feel normal,” Emma says. “Average. Human. Like I'm me and not what they thought--” The hand around her coffee cup tightens, and Regina feels Emma's thigh clench underneath the denim of her jeans. “What everyone else _designed_ me to be.” Her hand trembles and coffee sloshes over the rim of her cup and onto her fingers. Emma hisses, switches her cup to her other hand, and presses the hot spot briefly to her lips and tongue. “I shouldn't talk about this anymore,” she mutters. “I forgot napkins. Did I get you?”

Regina shakes her head. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Emma tells her, inspecting her right hand, her fingers still mottled green and pale purple. 

“I can't heal you here, you know,” Regina says softly. It's abrupt and clatters in the little space between them. “If you hurt yourself--”

“I know.” Emma's voice is firm and cold, and the space between them grows though neither moves.

“I will not hesitate to call a hospital if I deem it necessary.” She draws herself up in her seat, removes her arm from Emma's leg. Latches her hand around her cup. “I may not know why we're here or where we're going, but I will do what I can to make sure we both make it back home relatively unscathed. And alive.”

Whatever fortification Emma had been building falls to rubble and when she looks down at Regina, her eyes are bright. Still guarded, but she's locked herself behind stone walls and barbed wire fences for a year now and Regina doesn't see that changing any time soon.

But, “Thank you,” Emma says, and her eyes gleam in that overtly sincere way she's never been able to either hide or vanquish. Not when she means it. “For coming, I mean. Not for threatening me with doctors.” 

“I--” Regina begins and she knows how that sentence is supposed to end, how she wants it go--

for chrissakes, she's already said it once so it should be easier now, shouldn't it?

\--but the knife in her back still aches when she breathes too deeply and--

“I know,” Emma says, and slides her fingers through Regina's hair. “Me, too.”

–

It's 12 minutes past 11am and they're just outside of Boston. Emma turns the radio down two notches and says, “Boston won't take long.” She's hesitant and pulled all in to herself. Her focus on driving is a sham, evidenced by the rotation of her thumb against her first finger knuckle, the way her teeth sink into her lip, her periodic sighs lost in pop guitar chords. 

“It can take as long as it needs,” Regina says, her eyes still tracking the narrative of Housekeeping.

“You're being awfully accommodating.” Emma bites with the comment and grinds her teeth.

Regina's eyes flutter closed and she rolls them behind her lids. “Yes,” she says. “Purposefully so.”

“It doesn't feel like you.”

“Would you rather a cantankerous bitch be your traveling companion?” 

“You're not a bitch,” Emma shrills, and edges the Bug past 70.

“I can be,” Regina says. “And if--”

“Stop it,” Emma says through gritted teeth. “Just stop it. You are not evil. There is no fucking darkness here.” Her eyes flash, her knuckles whiten around the wheel. “We left that bullshit back in Storybrooke.” 

Regina's first exception is Emma's equation of _bitch_ and _evil_ , but this isn't about specific phrases or definitions. It's not even about Regina. “All right,” she says gently.

And Emma groans, a large sound rasping through a clenched throat. “See? That. Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Falling all over yourself trying to make me feel better or whatever the hell you're trying to do!” The muscles in Emma's neck pulse, the bruises on her hand flush and rage. 

A blue rest stop sign, arrow pointing towards an off ramp, approaches on the right. “Take this exit,” Regina says, her voice low, the muscles around her spine clenched.

“I--”

“Take it,” Regina says firmly. “We are not having this conversation at 75 miles an hour.” Her mind flashes with warped yellow metal, splintered glass, curls of smoke, and spattered blood. 

The blood means more when it leaks from someone loved.

Emma clenches her jaw and wrenches the car into the exit lane. Regina's hand flies to the window frame to brace herself as Emma whips the Bug through the exit for passenger vehicles and beelines for the nearest parking space. The Bug jolts to a stop, a white line directly beneath it. Emma flings back the parking brake. 

“Emma,” Regina says as Emma fumbles for the clasp on her seatbelt. 

“Save it,” Emma spits. “If you're not going to be honest with me, I don't want to hear it.” She's up, bag in hand. The door slams, the car shakes.

Regina watches Emma stalk through the parking lot towards the washrooms. She marks her page in Housekeeping,

( _She seemed to dislike the disequilibrium of counterpoising a roomful of light against a worldful of darkness._ Page 99. The 4th sentence of the 2nd paragraph.)

and slips the volume into the front pocket of her purse, sighing.

–

She finds Emma at 11:36am, hunched at the base of the largest elm tree in a grove of six with one Pall Mall half smoldered between her bruised fingers. Five feet away, there is one _No Dogs, Please_ sign tacked to one metal post. Just beyond it, Emma's bag lay in a rumpled heap, its contents strewn across the grass. 

8 sheets of paper,  
1 sketchbook,  
1 pencil case,  
2 books,  
1 iPod,  
1 set of headphones.

“I'm sorry,” Emma says without looking up.

Regina lowers herself to the ground beside her. Their shoulders brush, and Emma briefly leans against her, leans away again. Takes a drag of her cigarette, turns her head, exhales a thick stream of smoke.

Regina watches the smoke clear, but smells it still. “I'm not--” She breathes deeply. The tobacco stings her nostrils. “I'm sorry, too,” she says. She holds out her hand and Emma takes it. “There's no magic to read here. It's like being blind.” She pauses, licks her lips. “It feels like I've lost you.” 

Emma squeezes her hand, offers her a half smile. “I'm right here.”

Regina nods, but she knows she's distant and she refuses to hide her sadness. Emma's magic is raw, untamed beauty, and Regina misses the howl of it. “I'm not great at reading people without my magic.” _Or with it,_ she thinks. “I've been placing a priority on--” She pauses, weighing her words like gold. “--supporting your sense of agency.”

Emma's hand trembles, and she takes a long drag from her cigarette. Her body shakes on the exhale. 

Regina keeps holding on. “If you would rather I didn't, then tell me and I will prioritize accordingly.”

Emma huffs a laugh, still trembling, still just on the edge of breaking, but she says, “There's my Gina,” all luminous and bright, and Regina is thrilled. Thrilled she got through that moment without her magic, thrilled she said something right despite herself, and thrilled, yes, _thrilled_ Emma called her _hers_.

It's not possession, not like last time. Not like when Robin said, “My Regina,” and her smile felt dull and tasteless on her lips. _Mine_ is choice, not treachery. _Mine_ is a gift, equally given and equally received.

Emma grinds her cigarette out on the sole of her boot. “I need honesty,” she says. Ash speckles her jacket. She brushes it away. Her eyes go long and distant, her jaw clenches. Her eyes turn half-stone, half-glass.

Regina knows the malevolent glitter of what once said, “Love,” has gummed up Emma's mind. She says, “Hey,” and shifts closer. Says, “Em,” and runs her thumb across the back of her hand. “They're not here,” she reminds her. “They can't hurt us, not anymore. We left Henry with a librarian of all people. Storybrooke is safe.”

“Of course it is,” she whispers. “I killed them.”

And Regina's eyes widen, her body goes wide and wider, expanding and misplacing its ground because she's--

She's never said that before. Never in so many words. 

Emma's hand goes limp. “Gina, I killed them.”

The elm tree rustles. Branches creak. Three pages from Emma's bag trip through the grass.

Regina wishes she had her magic. She places a hand on Emma's back and,

“Yes,” she affirms. But, “It was complicated.” She must know that.

Emma shakes her head. “Don't kill people,” she whispers. “Not that complicated.”

“Em--”

“No,” she says. She briefly tightens her grip on Regina's hand, then drops it. She coughs and clears her throat. The glass leaves her eyes; they become all stone. “We need to get to Boston.” 

But the contents of her bag litter the grass in front of them. Emma looks away from the eight white pages, the sketchbook, the single pencil case, the two small paperbacks, her electronics, her-- 

She looks away from the bag and away from Regina. She doesn't move. 

_They have to get to Boston,_ she said.

“I'll get it,” Regina tells her. “Don't worry. I'll get it.”

–

It's 12:44pm and Regina's still not sure why they needed to get to Boston—it's hardly on the way to Rochester--but she can sense, she thinks, Emma's insistence, and stays her doubt in favor of trust. Reminds herself that her trust was—

\--was sickened by deception and that it's okay to feel jittery while she's rebuilding its strength.

At least, that's what Henry told her last year and he tends to know more about these things than she does.

But isn't one year quite a long time? Shouldn't she be stronger now?

Old trees and brick buildings rise like buttresses around them. Banged up cars and shiny taxis and more bicycles than she expected are jagged blurs on both sides of the Bug. More than once she jumps at the sound of a car horn, sits up straighter at an angry shout. Emma pats her knee, tells her it's normal and there's nothing to worry about. She worries anyway. 

She worries. She didn't used to.

They drive past shops and cafes and people. So many people. And Emma's turning down old roads and side streets, pointing out landmarks and positively animated in the driver's seat. 

“I lived here for two years,” Emma says, and clarifies, “That's a lot for me.” Her eyes are bright as she surveys the stone faces. “Not much has changed.” She seems to delight in that stagnancy—or, rather, the security of time's apparent absence. “Not that they'd let it change.” She points to the right. “There's a great cannoli place around that corner, and they,” she taps on the window towards a little cafe wedged between a shipping station and a Trattoria, “make an excellent cappuccino.” 

“But you hate cappuccino.”

“Right?” Emma is relaxed and smiling. Relaxed for the first time in months, and this smile—this smile is so _easy_. It drips from her face like honey, her voice tiptoes on the very edge of joy, and she looks--

younger.

Younger. Boston was before fairy tales became reality. 

Boston was before life became a different kind of beast, requiring that different kind of brave.  
Boston was before the world wrenched itself apart and turned everyone upside down.  
Boston was before.

Boston was Emma, and Emma alone. Before--

Just before.

Before the darkness made itself known.

She understands why they came to Boston.

Emma takes Regina's hand and kisses her fingers. “Wanna see where I lived when Henry found me?”

Regina smiles. “Of course I do.”

–

“That one,” Emma says, pointing at a brick building distinguished from the other brick buildings only because Emma is excited about it. “In the corner. Number 205.” Businesses occupy the first floor: a dry cleaner with a chipped blue awning, a deli advertising “Panini!” and “Zuppa!,” and a dingy corner store bearing the name “Store” in faded yellow letters. 

The horror of Henry traveling all the way to Boston by himself and navigating the streets alone strikes Regina anew. “I still can't believe he found you.”

“Yeah,” Emma sighs and sticks her free hand in the back pocket of her jeans. “That's pretty much how I felt, only with way more panic and profanity.” 

Regina laughs, full and deep, imagining Henry showing up unannounced on Emma's doorstep in his in-between-sizes-right-now jacket and too-big backpack, but then dry fingers brush her chin, brush the scar on her lip, and she sees Emma's flushed cheeks and hazel eyes and Emma presses their lips together. An arm wraps her waist, a hand tangles in her hair. Both pull her body closer. Emma's leather bag crinkles against her hip, and the ribbing on Emma's tank top twists in Regina's fingers. The sun heats them both, their skin warm, their bodies warmer.

Kisses feel different without magic, without Emma laboring under the burden of Storybrooke, and she isn't as skilled at reading _touch_ , has specifically avoided learning it, but this--

_oh,_ but this--

\--a whistle shrills the air and someone calls out, but the words are muffled by Emma's tongue and her lips, by her hand roving Regina's neck.

She pulls back, her cheeks flushed pink and her lip between her teeth. But she's smiling, so Regina assumes it's all right.

“Sorry,” Emma says softly. She touches their foreheads together. “You don't like PDA.”

Regina glances at the people around them. People she doesn't know, people who will forget them soon if they haven't already. People to whom they are a passing thought, or a passing hindrance. People who pass by other people on the skinny streets of large cities, on their way to somewhere important. Somewhere important that isn't here. 

She's not important here.

She supposes public displays don't matter all that much if there's no one to care. 

“It's all right,” she says. “I'd rather you kiss me than not.”

Emma laughs—

she _laughs_ , and is laughing still and radiant in her laughter. More than her magic now, Regina's missed this. The heart of Emma's laugh and the sweetness of her smile, and she thinks that of all the darkness has smothered, these two are the most tragic losses. 

Regina kisses her again and Emma hums against her lips. 

Emma's still smiling when they part, and Regina's chest is light with a different sort of magic. “Come on. Let's get lunch. I'm starving. _Again._ ”

–

A bell rings when they open the door of the deli at 1:28pm. A long glass case of meats and cheeses line the wall opposite them, and another holds bowls overflowing with salads and the makings of antipasti. A tumbling pile of cookies and biscotti perch on paper doilies in a case next to the register. Select spices, coffees, and teas fill glass containers against the wall, and Regina pauses to appreciate the multifaceted redolence. 

A large man in a green shirt and wrapped in a white apron raises his arm, rolls his wrist, says, “Vieni, vieni!” without looking up from making change for a customer. Time has whittled his bulk to heft, and whittled his black crown of hair to a shiny pate fringed with gray. The woman beside him, old, but stubbornly refusing to age, her hair pulled tightly back, gasps softly when she sees Emma.

“Ah,” she says, and shoves a paper wrapped order towards the customer. “Bella cigna! Pietro! Is bella cigna! Oh! Entra! Vieni qui! Fatti vedere!” She skips around the counter, her shoes squeaking over the well-worn linoleum, her arms flown wide like wings, and she comes fluttering straight towards Emma, singing, “Bella, bella!” Somehow, the woman manages to engulf Emma in a hug despite her head only reaching Emma's shoulder.

“Eh?” Pietro looks up from the register in time to see the woman kissing Emma's cheeks, and a loud honk of a laugh echoes from his belly. “BELLA CIGNA!” He calls over his shoulder, “Abri! Orso! Venite fuori, eh?” A young woman flies around the corner from the kitchen, retying her hair, and a young man follows her, twisting into an apron. They nod brusquely to the man as they take over the last of the lunch rush.

The man's arms are open and strong, and soon Emma and the woman are caught up and half-crushed in what seems like a too-long, too-late embrace. 

“Ciao, Pietro, Rosa,” Emma says as she pulls back, brilliant and— _happy._

“Anni, Bella!” Pietro says, his hands wrapping Emma's shoulders. “ANNI! Four years! Four years without Rosa's panini! How have you survived?”

“It's been rough,” Emma says. “It's good to see you.”

“Si, si, Bella,” Pietro says, and cradles her chin with a crooked finger. “It is good to see you, too.” 

Rosa touches Emma's hair, her arm and echoes, “Si, si!” adds, “Ah! Mia bella cigna!” But she turns a quizzical eye to Regina, and Regina forces herself to smile, to remain steady, even when indicated with a crooked finger. “Chi hai portato con te?” Rosa asks.

Emma holds out her hand towards Regina. “This is my--girlfriend,” she says, and Regina manages to keep a straight face at the moniker. They'll talk about that later. “Regina.”

“Ah!” Pietro gasps, and bows slightly at the waist. “A queen.”

Regina's heart stutters a moment before she realizes his meaning. “No,” she says, relieved, “but my mother had rather high expectations.”

“Eh, eh, a woman _is_ a queen,” Pietro says with air of finality. “That is the way it is.”

But Rosa steps twice towards her, her eyes narrowed, her hand extended, and the anxiety Regina felt when Snow discovered her relationship with Emma pales in comparison to now. Rosa is a Matriarch, capital M, capital respect. Mentally, she chides herself.  Kings threw feasts in her honor. Dignitaries and monarchs quailed in her presence. She conquered realms, took prisoners, thought nothing of killing them. _She_ was the one feared. An Italian grandmother with a stooped back and arthritic joints should be the least of her anxieties.

But she isn’t now like she was then, and somehow--

no, she _knows_ how--

her confidence cracked and the edges scarred her. 

Regina inclines her head and wraps her hand around the woman's, not too tightly, but with all the grace she's taught herself. “E un piacere conoscerla,” she says, and Rosa's eyes light, her jaw drops, and Regina finds herself wrapped in a warm and welcoming embrace. 

“Buono, buono,” Rosa says, smiling and slightly teary. She claps her hands together and scuttles off behind the counter and into the kitchen. Regina lets out a breath, relieved.

“Ah, you have made the impression,” Pietro says to Regina. His eyes are deep and knowing, like her father's. She wants to run from them and curl into them at the same time. “She gives her love in food, my Rosa. You will not be hungry long,” he assures them, “and you will not be hungry tomorrow. My Rosa has a big love.” He gestures to the last empty table. “Sit, please,” he says, his sharp eyes cutting across Emma's features as they pull out chairs. The chair legs creak when Pietro sinks onto the seat. “You left,” he says to Emma. “We were so worried. No warning, just poof!”

Emma scrunches her shoulders and squeezes his hand. “I'm sorry,” she says.

He spies the mottling on her hand, the accumulated scarring on her arms. The pink stripe on her chin. His eyes worry, but he says nothing, only rubs Emma's hand with a gentleness that belies his bulk. “We thought that maybe you were not too quick with the gun or with the wit,” he says. “But we check the papers, and no. Nothing about bella cigna.”

“I had—“ She glances to Regina. “I had family matters to attend to.”

Pietro slackens and his head cocks to one side. But slowly Emma's words sink in and slowly his body expands, up and up, and his face lightens, and when tears spring to his gleaming eyes, Regina has to swallow the tightness in her throat. “Family, mia bella?” he says carefully. “Did Rosa's candle--”

“Yeah,” Emma smiles. “Rosa's candle.” 

“Ah!” Pietro claps his hands together, and then waggles one finger at Emma. “Not so silly now, is it? The old magic, it has its ways.”

Regina reaches for Emma's other hand under the table, but Emma is already reaching for her. When their hands crash together, Emma's grip is almost painful. “Not silly at all,” she says.

“Tell me,” Pietro exhorts her.

“Uh, there's not much to tell, really. They found me,” she says. “Well, our son did.”

“A son!” Pietro exclaims. “Children, they are powerful magic, bella. Is it any wonder the candle worked?” He leans forward, his eyes dazzling, lips agape, so eager to soak up the story Emma keeps tightly bound and locked in cages. “And your family?”

“Uh,” she sucks in a breath and the cages rattle. “He, our son, brought me home. To my parents and--” She smiles, but it's tight and pasted. “And way more family than I ever thought I'd have.”

Pietro smile fades at thatt, and his fingers tighten on Emma's. Emma's unspoken sadness rises shadowlike between them. “How are they?” he asks softly. “Your family?”

“Buono,” Emma says, but her eyes flick down to her hands, and she shifts in her seat.

“Eh, eh,” Pietro says. “That face says no. No buono.” He sighs with his whole body, and Regina is surprised to feel his sorrow even without her magic. “I am sorry, bella cigna.” Before Emma can reply he asks, “Do they love you?”

Regina straightens, moistens her lips, because _family_ and _love_ mixed together make up one of Emma’s big red buttons. She will protect her, even from old, well-meaning friends. But Emma's shoulders sag just a fraction of an inch instead of clenching further. That means something. She stays her intrusion.

Emma swallows. Says, “They say they do.”

Regina runs her thumb along Emma’s skin and cannot stop her pride because she doesn't talk about this. Does not _ever_ talk about this, not like she's talking now, not to anyone but Regina. Her body is frail under the flickering light, and her bag claws at her shoulder. But she stays. She stays and she listens.

“No, no,” Pietro says. “Words are—“ He gestures to the chair beneath him. He rocks back and forth, making it creak. “Words are little. They do not hold so much. Actions, they are bigger. They hold more. What does your heart say?”

“They want to. Love me.” She nods, more to herself than to them. “But I can't be the person they want to love,” she says, her voice betraying her anguish. But _anguish_ , not anger. So close, those two. So close.

“No, you should not be,” Pietro says. “We can be who and what we are, and that is the way it is. The ones who love you will love you. The ones who do not, well--” He shakes his head. “It is villainy not to love. Villains, eh,” the syllable escapes as a sigh, the air out of a great burden born by the world, yet sheltered in it. “They need the love most.”

Emma laces her fingers with Regina's. “Si,” she says.

“Family is heart, bella cigna,” Pietro says. “Not only blood. Heart also. The heart beats the blood and gives the body life.” He smiles at Regina. “Sometimes our life is in other hearts. It is a different sort of life.” He leans away from the table and raises his arms in a full body shrug. “But what do I know, eh? I make the panini and the zuppa, and the words I use are too many. I am an old man now.” He laughs, his expression still buttery and soft. “I ramble.” 

“Bella!” Rosa scurries around the corner with a red plastic cooler. “Bella!” she says again, and rattles off a long string of Italian words, beautifully inflected and musical. She places the cooler on the table.

Pietro puffs a proud guffaw at Rosa's offerings. “What did I say?” he says. He kisses Rosa's hand. “A big love, so also big food.”

Regina smiles. “Le cose stanno così.”

Pietro laughs and Rosa's face lights up. She winks at Regina. “Sei una madre,” she says knowingly.

“Si,” Regina says, and gestures to herself and Emma. “Abbiamo un figlio.” 

Tears spring to Rosa's eyes and her hands fly to her cheeks. “Un figlio? Ah! Bella cigna et Regina! Molto bene!” She flits around the side of the table and manages to scoop both Regina and Emma into her arms. She kisses their cheeks, moistening their skin with her tears, whispering, “Si, si. Bene, bene,” and Regina feels warm inside, and thinks that maybe this is what having a mother feels like. 

Comfort and peace and unconditional welcome.

_Va tutto bene_.

–

It's 2:02pm, and they're back in the car when Emma asks softly, “Do you think they'd still treat me like that if they knew?”

Regina smooths the back of her fingers across Emma's cheek. “Of course they would.”

“How can you be so sure?”

She lifts Emma's chin until their eyes meet. “That is the way it is, bella.”

The corner of Emma's lips quirks. She brushes them against Regina's fingers. “Yeah,” she says. She looks down a moment, lost looking, but takes Regina's hand from her cheek. “I love you, too, you know,” she says softly.

And that  
— _that_ —  
just there—  
that warmth in her chest  
the lightness of her lungs  
the trickling-in release of invulnerability  
that _safety_

that is like magic.  
Magic in this world  
without magic.

She doesn't say anything, can't, her language all jumbled in her mind, so she nods. Just nods, her eyes wet, and feels the knife slip back a bit from in between her ribs.

–

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book Regina is reading is Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the lovely comments! I am beyond-words-delighted that you are enjoying this story!
> 
> An odd sort of trigger warning for waking up from sleep paralysis. It's not a full on depiction of SP, but there are elements of it here. Also a general warning for violence and a brief appearance by RH. If you find any others, please let me know.

She lands by a tree in a heap of singed wool, broken bones and too much freely flowing blood. The ground has that lumpy, uneven feel of old tree roots worn down by thick soled shoes and children's pen knives. The humus smells like a rainfall's decay. 

She doesn't remember broken bones hurting this much. 

She broke her arm when she was six.  
She fell off her pony.  
Her mother refused to heal it. 

She doesn't remember her shoulder bending that way before. 

“Regina!”

She sees all blurs, and overwhelm bristles her nerves, alerting her to danger and to pain. The danger of this much pain. 

Her brain tells her body to run;  
something is coming;  
run;  
run **now.**

Her body tells her brain to check back later. 

Her ears catch only ringing. The ringing sounds like gunpowder smells.

Screaming. Creaking. Rattling. Groaning. Beating. 

Blood beating.  
Blood beating out.

Screaming. There's so much screaming.

“REGINA!”

He's blurry green and taupe, and his quiver full of arrows look like spikes sticking out of his head like that dinosaur Henry carried with him when he was small. Dinosaurus Rex.

Robinsaurus Rex. Laughter burbles up from her lungs, viscous laughter, laughter red and laughter dying. Her ribs crack. Pain lances her shoulder, but she's laughing. Laughing and she can't stop. Laughing because her soul mate is a dinosaur and the Dark One hurled her over the clock tower. Laughing because Emma's the last line between the Dark One and the fairies, and she can't shake the idea that he isn't after the fairies at all. 

“Regina,” he says, and she feels fingers on her cheek, warm and calloused against her cold, damp skin. “It's me.”

“I know who you are,” she says, still laughing, though she can't remember why. Everything is broken. Everything is dying. None of this funny. Her blood flows free, and her son is missing. Her son could die. It's not funny. But still, she's laughing.

He's confused, his forehead creases. His eyes get folded up in skin and disappear like they do when he's distraught or smiles too broadly. It only makes her laugh harder. “Your eyes disappear when your face does anything,” she manages. 

Her mouth is too wet. 

“You've hit your head,” he tells her.

“No,” she laughs. Or maybe she has. The idea is hysterical. “I get loopy when my magic's low.” That's it. That's all it is. All she tastes is iron. It's her magic that's low. She turns her head and spits red with mucus cut through.

“Loopy?” The impossibility of the voice stops her laughter. “The Evil Queen _loopy?_ Now that's something I would love to see. So would her subjects, I'm sure.” The impossible voice is laughing now. “Too bad she won't survive long enough to see any of them again.”

“Zelena?” she asks. “But you're dead.” Her first thought is that the fall has killed her. Her slapdash spell to shield her body, conjured with the residue of her magic didn't work. She imagines her body broken and dangling from tree limbs. But corpses don't bleed and she's still spitting blood and Marian's cape is draping Zelena's shoulders.

And there, fit perfectly to Zelena, are Marian's pants, her shirt, her necklace.

_Oh, gods..._

“You were her,” she rasps. “All this time, you--” When did it get so cold? Shouldn't the fires make it warmer? The ash must be coming from somewhere.

“Sure was,” Zelena says brightly, cinched up close next to Robin. “Fooled you, didn't I?” She nods to him, runs her fingers through his cropped hair. “We both did.” Zelena grins as Regina's pallor grows. “Cuff her, won't you, darling? Gold may have done a number on her, but it's best not to underestimate your adversary. Especially if she's related to me.”

Robin pulls Greg and Tamara's cuff from his pocket.

An unshed scream dies in her throat; blood bubbles behind her tongue. He's approaching; she can't move. 

Run.  
Run **now**.

She was just eating lunch with Emma and Henry.  
Grilled cheese x 2. Chicken salad x 1.

“Why are you doing this?” she whispers to Robin right before the cuff cuts the last fiber of her magic and a not-quite-human groan wrenches from her gut.

He strikes her, closed fisted across the jaw. Her jaw cracks. She sees sparks. His voice distends. “You will no longer speak, do you understand?” he seethes. “You killed my wife. You destroyed my family. Destroyed countless others.” His lips are close enough to burn, his breath like offal. “You don't deserve to speak.”

The decaying humus sees it all. Eats it. Accepts the drips of blood. Says, _you will become what I am now._

And then she's screaming and the scream is a burn through her body because he's wrenching her arms behind her back in a way that arms are not meant to bend. He lashes her wrists together. Her vision is white stars and black clouds, but she refuses to pass out 

it's a nightmare

a nightmare  
a nightmare  
(wake up, wake up)

and someone's screaming  
and something's exploding  
and her vision is blackening  
and she can't feel  
can't feel  
can't feel  
anything without her magic  
(cut off)  
(powerless)  
(defenseless)  
(dying)  
can't call to Emma  
can't free herself  
can't get away  
and  
and  
and

He's looking straight at her and she doesn't know how she never noticed that dead space in his eyes before. But now she can't look away because it's the void she used to feel gaping inside herself that devoured the dust of beating hearts.

Beating, and she's bleeding out.

“My wife will be avenged,” he says, and his voice has an odd lilt to it, like he's the one amused. He glances towards town. “And I imagine the good Captain is about to avenge his love, as well.” 

He smiles, and she wants to wrestle against the power thwarting her magic. She could rise if she had her magic. She has no magic. She has no power. Blood coats her lips. Spills down her shirt. 

It's dark now. The sun must have gone on setting. 

“It's a day of revenge. I would think that would appeal to your dark, irredeemable heart.” He frowns at her, his eyes folded into his skin like he can't believe what he's seeing. He snorts derisively, scoffs, shares ridicule with Zelena. 

She realizes that she's crying.

Zelena's laughing. But Regina is crying. 

“Come now,” he says. He's struggling not to chuckle. Affected sympathy suffocates her. “You couldn't _really_ have believed that a hero could love someone like you.” 

She did think so. Stupid, foolish girl. She did. 

“It was fun, though, wasn't it? The whole charade?”

“Charade?” she whispers, and she feels emptiness beckoning, 

emptiness that smells sweet like decay,  
smells warm like soil, 

inviting her to be consumed, inviting her to give up, telling her

_it's all right to sleep now._

It's difficult to pull herself away.

He laughs. “Of course.” He draws an arrow from his quiver. “A vile thing such as yourself can't have real feelings, can it, love?”

“Of course it can't, darling,” Zelena clips out, bored now and patronizing. Green smoke fills her hand. “If you don't end her now, I will do it myself.” 

_it's all right_

He winks at her. “You heard the lady,” he says. He takes a few steps back. He cocks the arrow, takes aim. “For my wife,” he says. “And for the hundreds of thousands of lives you destroyed in the name of vengeance.”

_you can sleep now_

Zelena sighs. “Get on with it.”

A string twangs. 

But she doesn't hear it this time because--

“Gina!”

\--someone's patting her leg. 

“Hold on. I'm taking this exit.”

No one patted her leg that day. That day, no one said, _Gina._ She wasn't _Gina_ then, no. She was Regina and Mom and Madam Mayor. Evil Queen, perhaps, but that moniker was fading then. 

“Come on, baby, you gotta wake up.”

Baby. She called her _baby._ She's never called her that before. 

“Wake up, baby.”

Wake up. Baby.

She wants to laugh, but she can't move. She's pinned down, her jaw pinned shut. 

“Hold on.”

_Baby._

Oh.  
Oh.  
_Oh._

It's happening again. The forest shrinks, and she's aware she cannot tell what is dreams and what is waking. 

But she's aware. 

She choses waking. But waking is like struggling through oil mixed with sand. Waking grates her skin, scrapes the tissues of her mouth and eyes, and fills her joints with grit. She can't breathe. Can't move, not yet. Not yet.

A horn blares; she still sees Robin's arrow. The car swerves and she can hear Emma swearing; she still hears her sister cackling.

They're dead, she tells herself. Robin and Zelena are gone.

“Em?” she says. Or thinks. Wants to say, but can only think. She's in the forest, on that day; and moving in a car, strapped next to Emma in the passenger's seat.

June 10th. A very important day. The day that Emma slips away. One week ago Emma said to her, “Please come.”

The sun blinds. The sun filters through the trees. 

Robin aiming an arrow at her neck. Robin, who said, “I love you.” Robin, who never meant a word of it.

“Hang on, babe,” Emma mutters and she feels a hand land briefly on her leg. 

Emma, who means every word she says.

Her jaw aches with a shadow strike; she can't move it. Can't open her eyes. But didn't she see the sun just now?

Then someone's rubbing her leg, muttering softly, and she's no longer moving. The highway isn't whirring and the motor isn't running and--

and there's no magic.

She jolts, her hand slapping the wrist that bore the cuff 376 days ago.

“Gina!” someone's saying, “Gina, you're okay.”

But she's not and it isn't. She does not have magic here, and without magic she cannot protect herself, 

without her magic, she will bleed out, she will lose her son, she will lose--

she will lose without her magic.

“Hey,” someone says. Rubbing her arm, rubbing the bone between her breasts, and she realizes she can't breathe. Can't breathe, can't speak, but her eyes are open--

they're open, aren't they?

\--and Emma's just there--

she's there, isn't she?

She's her someone.

\--and her lungs contract, expand, contract, quickly, quickly, and she's gasping fire in her lungs but water in the air hissing her ears ring ring ring to the beat of her own blood

“Gina,”

is underwater,

“Hey look at me,”

garbles in the space between here and there,

and she's telling her body to move but somewhere lines get crossed and connections spark, spark but don't connect,

but she thinks her eyes are open and she can breathe now.

“Snow shot him,” she gasps, and she's not sure why that's what she says or if she's even said it, but it's important. 

It's important to remember that Robin did not succeed. Despite the glamour of his deception, 

she survived.

Her world upended, her love deceived her, but she fucking survived.

“It's okay,” Emma soothes. “Can you look at me?”

“Belle used the amulet.” Her words are soft and slurred. She feels Emma tilt her head. “Henry made a potion.”

“Open your eyes, Gina,” she hears,

but that's confusing because Regina can see her. Feel Emma's hand on her forehead. She's in the driver's seat, leaning over, her face close--

“Gina, open your eyes.”

She's being shaken, but the Emma she sees isn't the Emma moving. 

Regina's eyes spring open, then flurry shut because the waking sun shines brighter than the sun in any dream. She's gasping air into the wrinkled creases of her lungs. Heat crawls over her on heavy paws. A breeze licks beads of sweat off of her forehead and swipes her hair from out her eyes.

“Hey,” she hears, and there's Emma, kneeling outside the open door of the passenger's side. Emma. Emma in a black tank top and skinny jeans rolled up.

“Em,” she says, words still a slurry of syllables in her head. She reaches towards her, needing to feel her skin. “Am I awake?” she asks.

Emma presses Regina's hand to her cheek and nods. “Yeah,” she assures her. A hand presses gently, firmly down on her thigh, and she runs her tongue around her teeth to check for blood. There isn't any, but she tastes it just the same.

“You're awake,” Emma's saying. “Stay with me, okay? Don't go back to sleep.”

“I was dreaming--” she says, but cuts herself off. Emma knows what she was dreaming.

“Here.” Emma holds up a bottle of water with the top screwed off. “Take a drink.”

The water is cold and the cold is bracing, and that makes the return to now run a bit more smoothly. She swallows. Licks her lips. Covers Emma's hand with her own. Lays her head back. 

“Don't close your eyes,” Emma reminds her, and Regina breathes out slow through her mouth and nods. She's slow to crawl back into her skin, back into now. Perhaps it would be easier if either place felt safe. But Emma's stroking her forehead, her hand still heavy on her thigh, and the phantom taste of blood keeps fading. 

“What time is it?” she needs to know. She takes another sip of water.

“Almost four thirty,” Emma says, and because she knows Regina, continues, “We made it through Springfield about half an hour ago. Still in Massachusetts.” 

Regina nods and drains half the bottle.

“Wanna walk around a bit?” There's hesitance there--hesitance born of tenderness. Of desperately needing not to say the wrong thing.

“Give me a second,” Regina says. She pinches the bridge of her nose. Robin's face, his sneer, his hatred, burn in her mind, and in her mind, he is not just Robin. The specters of her past transform him into a demon, and she hears him say again _a vile thing like you--_

Fuck him.  
Just--  
_Fuck him._

She will not cry. She will not allow him to overpower her. Not again. She grips Emma's hand. “Talk to me,” she whispers. “Tell me anything.”

“Henry called,” Emma says immediately. “He told Belle about his system of organizing his comic books, so she's letting him go after the graphic novels because the system the library uses _quote_ sucks.”

Regina smiles. _Henry._ Henry bent over his laptop surrounded by piles of comic books. Heroes with tortured pasts; heroes never quite understood. Heroes on the precipice of villainy. Henry and his comic books.

“He uses a searchable database. He made it himself,” Regina says, and feels the words on her tongue and teeth, rolls them around her gums and against the roof of her mouth; she's awake and speaking now. This is what is happening. She pauses, and looks down at Emma, her expression soft and wondering, and asks “You--you talked to him?” because Emma rarely talks to Henry anymore, not without her there.

Emma draws a big breath, lets it out with a, “Yeah. I did.” Her smile is a half-decided curve, her shoulder pokes up a bit. She's squinting in the sun.

“You made his day.”

“I don't know about that.”

“No,” Regina says. “You did. Trust me, please.” 

Emma's mouth opens an inch. She looks away, looks down at their hands. “Okay.” She taps her finger on Regina's thigh. “I told him we'd call back when we stopped.” 

“Did you?” Regina says carefully. 

“Yeah,” she says. She looks to the gas station parking lot, the faded brick of the buildings. The café across the parking lot still advertises coffee for $.49 a cup. “Can't get much more stopped than this.” 

“Okay,” she says, but carefully. Desperately trying not to say the wrong thing.

“Okay.” Emma clambers up from the ground, gravel crunching underfoot. She's around the Bug in a moment and digging through her bag for her phone. Emma's relationship with their son may still be tremulous, but he's also still number 1 on her speed dial. The phone rings once on speaker before he picks up. 

“Welcome to Little Princes' Pizza. We're currently running a special on our extra large Your Mother Would Not Approve, made with questionable but delicious meat products and extra greasy cheese. Can I interest you in the super thick crust? We fry it before we bake it!”

Emma smiles and Regina rolls her eyes, but she's delighted to hear his voice. “ _One_ of your mothers would most certainly not approve.”

“Nope. Our pizzas are 100% nutrition free, ma'am.”

_“Ma'am?”_

“Mom,” he says quickly, and the clatter of something dropped in the background crackles through the line. “I meant Mom.”

“Of course you did.”

“So, where are you guys?”

“Somewhere between Boston and Rochester,” Regina tells him.

“How'd you like Boston?”

“It's big,” she says, because she's not sure what else to say. Her mind's still a bit muddy. “I saw where Emma used to live. We were able to meet two of her friends.”

“Mom has friends in Boston?”

Emma pulls a leg up to her chest. Rests her chin on her knee. Breathes deep. The fact of friendship doesn't fit right just yet.

But, “Yes,” Regina says, reaching out to comb her fingers through Emma's hair. “She does.” Emma leans her head back against the headrest, offers her a small smile.

“Cool! I didn't know that! I'm glad you guys got to see them.”

“Me, too,” she says. She misses him. “How are you?”

“Belle let me have a mocha.”

A sound of protest crackles through the speaker. _“That was Granny!”_

Henry pulls the phone from his mouth and when he says, “You didn't say no!” it verges on sing song. 

_“I wasn't there!”_

She makes a mental note to give greater consideration to Belle's request for a children's wing in the library. “What did you think?” she asks.

“Wait, what? You're not angry?”

“You think I don't know that Granny's been slipping you espresso shots for months?”

“But I was being sneaky!” He's almost whining. Almost. Not quite.

“Your mothers wrote the book on sneaky, dear.”

“So if I stay sneaky, you won't be mad because that means I'm taking after my awesome moms?”

Her mom senses tingle. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing.” 

“You're staying away from my potion books?”

He says nothing.

“Henry _Daniel_ Mills.”

“But--”

“No.”

“I'm really good at it!”

She sighs. “Just—“ And presses her lips tightly together. She groans low, almost growling. “Wait until I get home.”

“YOU'LL TEACH ME?!”

Emma arches an eyebrow.

“I'll--” She draws a deep breath. She's known this was coming. Ever since he made the potion that healed her _and_ restored her magic all in one perfectly portioned, exquisitely balanced go without any sort of instruction or supervision and specifically against her wishes, she's known and dreaded their son's facility with potions. She's proud. She is. But-- “We'll talk about it.”

“Really, really? Like, _really_ talk about it? You're not just gonna say no because it's _so dangerous_ and you're scared of putting me in danger even though I think by now I've seen plenty of examples of what happens when magic drives people psycho?”

Emma gasps, her hands cradling her stomach as if someone punched her. Her jaw moves down and back--

“Emma,” Regina says, reaching out to her--

but she skirts Regina's hand, grabs her bag, and fumbles her way out of the Bug. The car shakes with the slamming door.

“No! Emma!” Henry cries. “I didn't mean you!” She hears a muffled groan laced with what sounds like profanity.

She takes the phone off speaker, and holds it to her ear like a lifeline to her son. “Henry--”

“Mom, let me talk to her!” He's frantic, and she tries to think of something soothing to tell him, but comes up empty. “She actually talked to me for, like, three minutes earlier and I don't want her to shut me out again.”

She closes her eyes. She's still shaky from waking. But, “She won't,” she assures him as she clambers out of the Bug. “We won't let that happen, all right?”

_“Please.”_

Emma's pacing the parking lot, kicking stones and already halfway through a cigarette. She's all coiled tension and bared nails and looks distrustfully at the phone when Regina hands it to her. 

“He wants to talk to you,” Regina tells her. 

Emma licks her lips and looks away. Inhales long on the filter.

Regina sets her jaw, feeling more _Mom the Mayor_ than _Gina_ just now. “Emma,” Regina says, her finger over the speaker, and moves in front of her. “I love you.” She dips her head to capture Emma's glance, but it's slippery and slips under the shame in Emma's hunched up shoulders. “I love you,” Regina says again. “More than I ever thought possible.” And Regina's trembling because she promised herself she'd never do this. “But I will not be with anyone who treats my son the way you're treating him right now.” 

Emma's eyes immediately find hers and those hazel eyes flux deep forest green, and they are burning. Bright with tears and burning with barely controlled fire fueled by her own self-loathing. Her fingers tighten around the filter and Regina's eyes flick to the healed over burns on Emma's arms.

“You are his _mother_ , and he loves you. Do not punish him because he spoke without thinking,” she says. “Don't push him away because you're scared you're going to hurt him. This, what you're doing, running away from him? That's hurting him more than a shattered femur and a punctured lung ever could.” She offers her the phone. “Please, Emma.”

Emma's shaking. She's snapping her eyes from Regina to the phone, shoulders stooped and knees bent, like she's a cornered animal and Regina's holding a gun. 

“What happened before--” 

Emma shirks her again and spins away. 

_“Stop,”_ she says sharply, and Emma does. Petulant and resistant, but she stops. Regina closes the distance between them, and wants to shake Emma out of herself. Wants to crush the hearts of every single damn person who had a hand in driving her so deeply inside. But they're dead and they're gone and their family is supposed to be safe now, but unstable ruins can still crush out life, and her hands are bloody from trying to dig Emma out. 

“It wasn't you're fault,” Regina says, and she realizes the energy coursing through her may not be magic, but it is passion. Passion for Emma to understand what she and Henry have always known, and frustration that she cannot force understanding on her.

_You had to learn_  
_that they were wrong_  
_about you._  
_That you were wrong_  
_about yourself._

She lifts her finger from the speaker, reaches a hand towards Emma. Emma tenses, but does not flinch away. Her cheek is streaked with sweat soaked dust. Regina swipes it away with her thumb. “You had no control over your actions then,” she says carefully. “But you do now.”

Emma's still shaking. Shaking and staring at the phone, her face flushing red. She drops her cigarette. Sniffs and swipes at her eyes. Holds out her hand. She stares at Henry's picture on the call screen, hovers her finger just above his cheek. She raises the phone to her ear. Tears crest her eyes.

“Henry?” she whispers.

“MOM!” Henry's voice rings penitential and passionate. Regina can only make out a few phrases, but he's talking a mile a minute as he does when he's desperate to keep what he thinks is slipping away.

Emma's sobbing. She's clutching the phone to her cheek with both hands and she's sobbing. Sobbing and saying, “I'm sorry, Henry, I'm sorry,” over and over and over. Her knees buckle. Regina catches her and lowers them both slowly down. The gravel pokes into her thighs and hips. The wind kicks up eddies of dust. But they sit, wrapped up together, Emma sobbing to their son and Regina with her cheek pressed against Emma's left shoulder, rubbing her back in slow circles.

“It's okay, Mom.” The speaker makes Henry's voice tinny. “I love you and I'm sorry, too, but it's okay now. I promise that it's okay.” 

It's okay now.

I promise.

_It's okay._


	5. Chapter 5

“You're in late this year.” The woman behind the desk pushes her glasses up her nose, but the heft of the lenses drags them back down and only the flare of her nostrils stops them. The woman's brow is dappled with sweat, and the guts of the air conditioner lay tumbled together in the corner. “Run into trouble?”

“Not as much as your AC,” Emma says, and slips the woman a wry smile. “Hey Edith.” Her feet clomp across the carpet. Her words stick in the thick air. “No. No trouble.”

Edith eyes Regina over her tortoise shell frames. “Good to hear,” she says, but absently. Regina stiffens under Edith's scrutiny. She's annoyed and tired and would rather avoid--

“I booked you in 112,” Edith says. “Like usual. Didn't know you'd have company.” She's fluffed up and flustered, and pecks at her registration book with her pencil. “I can put you in 204. Two doubles there.” 

The pencil begins crossing out Emma's name, but Emma says, “No, no,” and tosses Regina a look over her shoulder. “One bed's fine.”

Edith's jaw begins to drop, but she catches it and says, “Oh.” She makes a mark in her ledger. “Well. None of my business--”

“It certainly isn't,” Regina mumbles. 

“--here's the key, dear,” Edith says, dangling a hotel key towards Emma, still regarding Regina with suspicion. “You know the drill. Breakfast from 6 to 8. Good to see ya again.”

“Regular ray of sunshine,” Regina says as they're leaving the office, luggage clunking over errant gravel in the parking lot.

“It _is_ almost midnight,” Emma says. “And I've never brought anyone with me before or gotten in this late.” 

Emma's assessment of the Roadway Motel was accurate. It's not great—thin bedspread, thinner carpet, dim lighting, low thread count sheets--but there's a bathroom and bed, and neither smells questionable. 

“I'll look into someplace a bit fancier next year,” Emma assures her. “That is,” she adds quickly, “if you want to come with me again.”

Regina smiles. “Of course I do. I'd be okay with a sleeping bag and a rock right now so long as neither were in transit,” Regina says, and her jaw stretches in a wide mouthed yawn that waters her eyes. She covers her mouth, blinks her eyes clear, and unzips her bag, her sleep dumb fingers only fumbling the zipper once. 

Emma collapses into a chair that reminds Regina of Good Housekeeping circa 1985. Emma pulls off her shoes and rotates her ankles, popping the small bones. “You sure? This trip hasn't exactly been, well, smooth.”

“I didn't come for sightseeing,” Regina tells her. “I came for you.” 

The sentiment doesn't stick. “Thanks for driving,” Emma says quickly. “I didn't mean for you to--”

“I know,” Regina tells her, and she does. But she pauses, teetering between standing and sitting, toiletry bag in hand. “How are you doing?”

They haven't spoken in six hours, not since Emma's conversation with Henry. After she had cried and ended the call, she had calmed dramatically, became nearly mechanical, slipping out of Regina's hold and saying, “I shouldn't drive.” She had climbed into the passenger's seat, leaving Regina to follow. Emma hadn't spoken again until Regina told her they were nearing Rochester.

Now, Emma says, “All right,” which could mean anything. But it's almost midnight, Regina's driven more today than she ever has, and the blur and hum of the road has mushed her mind. So she accepts Emma's _all right_ , and goes to the sink to wash her face and brush the film from her teeth. 

Emma strips down to her underwear and a tank top. She stretches out over the bedspread, her toothbrush on the table beside her. She's asleep before Regina screws the cap back on her moisturizer. There's a fleece blanket in the closet, still soft and mostly unused. It smells like gardenias and slinks into the curves of Emma's body when Regina drapes it over her. 

–

A sudden kick to her calf wakes Regina instantly. Her mind sharpens to a pointed, single intent. Her fingers curl. But the only substance in her veins is blood, and the only presence in her lungs is air. Magic may be emotion, but without the electric tide of enchantment rippling through her marrow, all her emotions summon are an adrenalin spike and a clenched fist.

The light from the street lamp falls through the loose weave of the curtains, throwing a yellow-orange dapple over the carpet. Curled beside her, Emma groans, her eyes squinted shut, her face contorted, still sleeping.

“Emma,” Regina says softly, running her fingers across Emma's cheek. 

Emma kicks out again, mumbles, “I don't— _stop_ ,” and Regina knows the component experiences of Emma's dreaming. Emma related them to her months ago, her head resting on Regina's chest, her brow damp, the blankets pulled over them in the bed. It had been 3:06 in the morning, night and the new moon engulfing them in a glass-like stillness. The metallic edge of dark magic had saturated Emma, wrapped her up tighter than the cling of Regina's arms.

“How can you stand to be so close to me?” she had asked. “This magic is--” Her fingers laced and worried each other, her hair draped in shanks like a curtain between them. “It's like I have razors instead of skin.” 

Regina had wiped Emma's brow with the back of her fingers. “Dark magic doesn't scare me.” She had tightened her arm around Emma's shoulders. “You don't scare me.”

“I scare me,” Emma had said. 

Regina knew well the difficulty of living when one's power seeped past the point of empowerment and into self-immolation. She made herself a sacrifice to the void of that magic of her own accord, imprisoning more and more of herself and her will in order to be free. She did not notice the slow decay of real power no more than a boulder notices the sea wearing its body to sand. Power becomes the order and peace the plea, but peace cannot be found in a heart mired in a void of addiction to self-loathing. And self-loathing is all the darkness of that razored magic is. One cannot be free of a thing one refuses to let go.

“You're okay, Em,” Regina says now, quietly, wishing she could make the words true by saying them. Because it's not okay. It's not okay to be betrayed by a man believed to love you. It's not okay to be manipulated and made a fool by your own longing, your own staunch refusal to see the coming betrayal because all you've ever wanted was for someone to say, “I love you,” and mean it. They have that now, here, with each other. But present happiness does not absolve past indignities.

Regina kisses Emma's forehead and Emma wakes. She wakes with a burst and a gasp. With eyes white all the way around and Regina can smell her fear. Regina smiles in the thick of it. “It's me,” she says. “It's only me.”

Emma grabs her hand and squeezes Regina's fingers tight together. _Here, yes,_ her body says. _Here, now._ She presses her head back into the cheap cotton batting of the pillow.

“I'm a moron,” Emma says and wipes the corner of her mouth with her free hand.

“You--”

“Don't.” Her tone bites, and even though there is no magic, Regina feels Emma crackle. She lets go Regina's hand and scrabbles from the bed. “Don't tell me I had no way of knowing.” She slaps out angry steps across the carpet. The streetlight speckles her with interrupted bars of light, and she looks like a lioness caged. Her braid has come undone; she shakes loose her hair. She balls up her fingers and then splays them like the bloom of a firework again and again. “He was a slimy, cum-encrusted weasel,” she rasps.

“He was,” Regina agrees. The description is apt and appealing in its vulgarity. He was a vulgar, vile creature. They both were. Neither cared, only pretended they did. Robin wanted her head, Hook wanted Emma's power.

“I should've seen it,” Emma says, still pacing. “I tracked down assholes like him for a living.” Her hands are a frenzied blur of gestures, bloom and fade. “I knew their M.O.'s and I still--” A strangled groan ekes from her throat.

Regina wants to tell her it's okay, that they'll sort through it. That it's only been a year, but sometimes a year isn't enough. Sometimes _time_ is not enough. But in the back of her mind she wonders what they're both doing in a relationship when they're not yet over the ones that came before. 

Doubt is a niggling, writhing worm in the pit of her stomach that stills sometimes, but never dissolves. 

“He ruined my life,” Emma says quietly.

Regina straightens, her doubt multiplying because she is now a focus of Emma's life. Her mind fogs, thoughts scatter, ears stop hearing. And she tells herself that Emma didn't mean it like that. Emma didn't mean that being with someone who truly loves her is ruination compared to a perverted and duplicitous attachment. 

She didn't mean— _that_. 

But Emma's still pacing, her hands still crackling, mind still wandering corridors barred from light. The fog of Regina's mind rolls between them and when Regina speaks, her words thin out in front of her and she's not sure she spoke at all. “Did he?” is what she thinks she says. 

“Killing the Dark One tends to destroy you, yeah,” Emma says. Emma--she's careless with words when she's upset, doesn't always think through what she's saying. Sometimes what she says isn't at all what she means, and she doesn't mean it like that.

Regina is not Emma's ruination.   
Not again.  
Please,  
Not again.

This line of reasoning is selfish and destructive, but she's hard pressed to find another with ruts as familiar as these.

She should've seen the deception coming.  
She should've known better than to expect anything else.  
She should've known and seen and been-- _different._

“We can be who and what we are, and that is all we can do.”

Regina reorients her focus to Emma. Emma, who is rifling through her bag, pulling out running shorts and socks. Emma, who is too glassy eyed; Emma, who is breathing too quickly. 

“Where are you going?”

“Running.” 

“It's three in the morning.”

“No,” Emma says and nods her head towards the clock. “It's five.” She's pulling on an orange sports bra and running shorts and her hands are shaking. Regina watches. She watches Emma slide her feet into a banged up pair of Nikes. Watches the shoelaces tremble and tangle, pinched between Emma's fingers. Hears her mutter, “Goddammit,” and winces at the strained edge. Emma's stretched thin, and she's doing all she can not to shatter. 

A heartbeat, and Regina crouches in front of Emma on the floor. Pillow creases still run in pink lines across Emma's cheek and Regina wants to smooth them over. Covering Emma's hands with her own, Regina passes her thumb across Emma's skin, dry, as usual, and reluctant to give up moisture. Emma's hands don't stop shaking, but her breathing slows, and her fingertip curls around the edge of Regina's wrist, pressing their skin together, close and tight. It's an admission and desperation, and it's far more than Regina anticipated.

But Emma's fear smells like leaves beginning to decay, and though there is no magic here, Regina feels the frantic whip of the Dark One's power lashing against the barrier of Emma's lightness. They are two in her mind: Emma and the Dark One. But the Dark One is not equal to Emma, could never be equal to the depth of Emma's light. So far, the Dark One has only broken through when controlled by the dagger. Only once has someone been possessed by arrogance audacious enough to wield that blade while Emma was attached to it.

He died. 

He died like Robin died.

Hook died by the same hand that killed Robin. Regina's magic hadn't been able to pierce the maelstrom of darkness Emma had been forced to conjure, but Snow's arrow, fueled by the rage of a mother protecting her daughter, somehow had. 

It had all come to ruin anyway. The damage done. Emma was right about that.

Regina squeezes Emma's hands and moves them to the side. Slowly, carefully, she picks up the laces of one of Emma's shoes and ties a base knot. Emma pulls a deep breath, settles further into herself.

“I'd like to know where you're planning to run,” Regina says.

“I-I was just going to run,” Emma tells her and cracks her knuckles against the floor. “No plan.”

Regina secures a double knot. “The average city block is one sixteenth of a mile. If you run a four block by four block square, you will have run approximately one mile.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“Civic matters are my responsibility,” Regina says. “It's my job to know that.”

“Oh. Right.”

“According to the map, this area's residential blocks are gridded. If you go down to the corner by the gas station and turn north, you will be able to run a four by four block square.”

“Okay.”

“You average an eight minute mile--”

“You know my running time?”

Regina looks down at Emma's shoes and loops the laces over one another, pulls them tight. “You run when you're upset,” she says softly. She makes bunny ears and wraps them once around each other. “I pay attention to your time because I--”

“You want to make sure I don't do anything stupid.”

“Drastic,” Regina corrects. She keeps track because she doesn't completely trust some of the townspeople's intentions towards Emma, either. They're a fickle bunch, given more to mob mentality than reason.

“Oh.”

“You run eight miles when you are most upset, which usually takes you between sixty and seventy minutes.” Regina double checks the double knots on Emma's shoes, makes sure the middle laces are tight enough to support Emma's arches. “Does that feel all right?” she asks.

Emma's breathing is softer now, longer on the inhale, short and bursting on the exhale. She still smells like sleep and autumn mornings. “Yeah,” she says. Her voice is like the exhale. 

She feels Emma's eyes on her, like sun through a magnifying glass, feels the moment funneling in on them, as if the space circumscribing two people, two broken, fumbling people, could somehow contain the breadth of galaxies or the depth of oceans and she doesn't know what to say, so she says, “An hour.” But the invocation of time feels discontinuous here, just now, and she backtracks with a barely audible, “I mean--” and her hands fly to her elbows and latch on because she isn't sure what their purpose is anymore now that the laces are tied.

“An hour,” Emma says, and tips Regina's chin up with two calloused fingers. There are galaxies in Emma's eyes and oceans rollicking just beneath her collarbones, but all of that is too much and far too alive and churning to imagine, so she stops.

She stops and Emma kisses her. And she feels a sea beneath her ribs undulating with a raucous pulse, a sharp rasp and the pull of a riptide.

Emma pulls away and Regina breathes.

A rasp and a tide. That tide is the flotsam of memories she'd rather forget and the rasp is sandpaper in her mind reminding her that she is living and here, with Emma, now. The rasp is not uncomfortable; the rasp is discordant.

“I'll be back in an hour,” Emma says and her thumb's rough skin sweeps a line across Regina's bottom lip. 

Regina nods. “Please,” she says softly, and while she means, _Please, do be back in an hour,_ she also means, _Please, don't go,_ because there's something foreboding about Emma running into a red sky when she's a frothed up ocean with a tide pulling in. She doesn't have her magic here. Should anything happen, Regina wouldn't be able to find her, to help her. She cannot heal here; she does not have her power here.

“I'll come back,” Emma says, the lines of her palm like valleys against Regina's cheek. “I promise I won't punch anything.”

It's supposed to be funny, but Regina's choked up smile feels more like a grimace. “Down to the gas station, then head north,” Regina reminds her, trying to ignore the tightness behind her jawbone, the clench of her throat. It's just an hour, and she shouldn't be this clingy. People leave or seethe when she holds on too tight. When she believes too strongly, it all goes wrong. “Four blocks square.”

“Like I'm running a track,” Emma agrees.

“Take your phone.”

“But I don't--” Emma starts and stops and stops a sigh. “Yeah, okay.”

“Thank you,” Regina says,   
and Emma says, “Thank you,” back   
and Regina frowns. 

“For what?” she asks.

Emma squeezes Regina's hand and traces a circle on the back of it with her thumb. While Regina can still see Emma's inner world quaking like Storybrooke did the day that pirate held the dagger, a smile trembles between Emma's cheeks. “For giving a shit,” Emma says softly. “Even though I'm—I'm not who I used to be.”

“No one is,” Regina says, and holds firmly to Emma's hands because it is important that she understands that, “You're _Emma_ to me.”

Emma's eyes squeeze shut and her fingers clamp around Regina's. Regina knows she's thinking of Snow, the woman whose belief in the sanctity of heroes will not be swayed, not even for her own daughter. 

And Emma, still Emma, nods and rises to her feet, pulling Regina up and latching her into a sudden embrace. Regina nestles her nose into the crook of Emma's neck, breathing in deeply her autumn smell and wrapping her arms around Emma's shoulders and the small of her back. Emma's fingers dig into Regina's shoulders, her jaw pressed tight to Regina's temple, and they are edges to eases, bones to flesh. Lips brush Regina's hairline and then Emma's clambering out of their embrace, muttering, “I gotta go. I g-gotta go.”

And Regina's nodding and holding herself, arms folded together across her stomach in an attempt to keep herself, that frothing ocean all inside her, _in_ and contained and less than a maelstrom. Emma's turning towards the door and the door is opening and the sun is rising and Regina thinks she may never see her lover after this. She'll run into the sun and forget to run back out again. She'll burn up or burn through and crumble into a little pile of ash that the wind could steal so easily out to sea.

She's being paranoid. Paranoid and overprotective and—and scared. 

Not everyone leaves.  
Not everyone betrays.  
But everyone--

What was it that Henry said? That they needed to be a different kind of brave? Maybe this is what he meant. Being bereft of magic with a tremulous trust bolstered by her stilted belief.

Not everyone is brave. Not brave like this.

“Be back in a bit,” Emma calls over her shoulder and the words squeak through just before the door hits the jamb. 

Not everyone lies.  
She'll be back.  
Regina can be brave.  
She can be this kind brave. 

–

For 1 hour, Regina tries to read. The words loop and writhe, disregard their lines. E's become G's and H's drop out of words. Nouns climb behind verbs so nothing acts and the story is only actions taken and received. Running, lying, stealing, saying, breathing, betraying with no one to act it out. 

A story without characters because everyone has left. She couldn't reach the walls of the room. The walls would recede from her fingertips. The walls would recede and the floor would drop and the room is far too big and too too far away even though she's in it. The atmosphere is liquid in her lungs and she's drowning in her own delusions of car accidents and missteps and a blond ponytail bobbing into the sun.

She's not sure she can be this brave.

But it's 6:02 in the morning now,   
and there's coffee in the office.   
She'll get 2,   
1 black   
and   
1 with cream and 2 sugars,   
and when she returns,   
Emma will be there. 

Emma will be there when she gets back because Emma is only running 8 miles and Emma runs 8 miles in 60 to 70 minutes. Emma left 63 minutes ago, so

Emma will be there.

She will.

–

Emma is not there when she returns at 6:12am and she's holding her breath and holding

2 cups of coffee,   
1 black   
and   
1 with cream and 2 sugars. 

The room that was too big is now too small and the atmosphere that was liquid has turned to lead. Her skin is a close bound net of chainmail. Her organs sputter and her bones splinter and her physicality is ground down to a pile of sand until all she is, is a mind and a half-dark heart devoid of magic because it's 6:13am and Emma is gone.

She'll come back.   
She's just out for a run.  
Emma will come back.  
Regina perches on the edge of the paisley bedspread. She waits.

(Dear god she does not know what to do what if something happened something she cannot fix because she has no magic no recourse an untrustworthy self a mind mottled with insecurity she didn't know she didn't know and he was supposed to be--)

Emma will come back.

–

Regina calls Emma's cell phone at 6:30am.

Five rings and Emma does not answer. Regina hangs up. She tries again.

5 rings and Emma does not answer. She hangs up. She tries again.

5 rings and Emma still does not answer. Regina realizes her fingers are clenched around her phone when the plastic creaks. The glass screen shivers against her cheek and her lungs shake for air, but everything around her is lead and nothing she can breathe. 

_Hey, it's Emma. Sorry I missed you. Leave me a message._

“Emma, it's me,” Regina croaks out. She swallows the thickness in her throat, but the thickness tangles in her chest. “I'm—I'm wondering if you're okay.” She's worried Emma is not okay. “Call me when you get this.” 

Her thumb swipes the call closed as she remembers to say,

“I love you.”

–

She's alone. The coffee is cold. 

It's 7:00am. 

She should go. She should look for Emma. She imagines herself zigzagging through the city streets calling frantically; she imagines Emma returning to an empty motel room and two cold cups of coffee.

Rochester's non-emergency number is printed on the information sheet on the table.

It is an emergency that Emma is not back yet, but she knows that it would not be an emergency to anyone but her.

She stands. Her legs wobble. The numbers on the print out jostle on the page. She dials the number halfway and then deletes it. Her fingers are tips of skin without the knuckles or the bone. 

Just give it more time.

But how much more? Emma is not back and Emma is not answering. She dials again. The numbers on the call screen nag at her, unsent.

“Fuck,” she whispers and stabs the call button.

The second the call goes through and the phone starts ringing, she nearly hangs up but, “Rochester Police Department, non-emergency line,” a voice says.

“Yes, hello,” Regina says, and she is unprepared to speak, to carry on a conversation with a stranger who knows neither Emma nor herself. A stranger who does not know their story and may not care to. “My-my partner hasn't returned yet, nor is she answering my phone calls. I'm afraid something may have happened to her. We're from out of town.”

“How long has she been gone?”

“She was supposed to be back an hour ago,” Regina says, and then adds quickly, “She's never late.” It's a lie. A horrible lie because Emma is often late, but she's never late like this.

The voice on the other end of the line turns sympathetic. “Ma'am, we can't do anything until she's been missing for twenty-four hours.”

“We're not from here,” Regina insists. “We're visiting. Could you—could you give her description to officers in the area? If they see her--” Regina cuts herself off. What if they see her? What then? What would Emma do if approached by officers?

“Of course, ma'am,” and the voice drips with placation. “I can't promise anything. Could you please give me a physical description of your partner?” 

The lead in the air thins out; she's doing something, being useful, instead of sitting on her hands and lamenting her powerlessness. “She's thirty-two. Five feet, seven inches tall, slender, athletic. Long blond hair pulled up in a ponytail. She's wearing orange running shorts and a white tank top. She should've replaced her shoes a year ago, but she's absurdly attached to them.”

There's a stifled snicker on the other end of the line. “My husband does that, too,” the dispatcher says. “And my son.” 

“So does our son,” Regina tells her. It's an odd sort of bonding Regina does not generally indulge in, but if confessionals will help her, so be it. “They get sentimental over the strangest things.”

“Not to mention the smelliest,” the dispatcher says. “What's your wife's name?”

Wife. Regina doesn't correct her. “Emma Swan.”

“Emma?”

It is the lilt of the inquiry that spurs her to ask, “Yes, do you know her?” with a hope she immediately discounts as absurd, but it rises so suddenly and she's so unaccustomed to surges of optimism that she can't quell it.

“No, ma'am,” the woman said, her voice tinged with empathy that makes Regina feel even more foolish. “I just need to make sure my information is accurate.”

“Emma Swan,” Regina repeats softly. “Swan, like the bird.”

“Have you looked for her?” 

Heat rises in Regina's cheeks. “No,” Regina admits. “I—I'm not familiar with the area, and I didn't want the room to be empty in case she came back.” 

“Where are you staying?”

“The Roadway Motel,” Regina tells her. “On Goddard.”

The dispatcher hums softly. “There's a diner two blocks down from you, ma'am. The Sunrise Skillet. That block's pretty mainline for that part of town. Why don't you start there while I pass this description on to the patrols in the area? My name's Gretchen. Be sure to call back when you find her, okay?”

_When you find her,_ Gretchen says. “You'll call me if your officers find anything?”

“Yes, I'll just need your name and number.”

Regina gives them to her, and needs to be out of the room, scouring the area for Emma. Gretchen double checks that the information is accurate and assures Regina they'll do what they can. Regina's already sliding her feet into her shoes and gathering her purse as Gretchen hangs up.

Emma would hate that she called the authorities. Emma, who wants nothing to do with anyone anymore because she's terrified she'll hurt them. Emma, who ends up hurting them anyway because worse than being hurt by darkness is being cut out of a life you love.

She won't hurt anyone here, though. There's no magic. No darkness to taunt her or to tempt her. She wouldn't hurt anyone here.

Emma wouldn't hurt anyone.


End file.
